The world became obsessed with Hygge (hoo-gah) when The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking (subtitled “The Danish way to live well”) hit the shelves of book shops around the world. I was so enamored by Hygge that it became a personal aspiration to create a life infused with cozy moments that were hyggelige. For those unfamiliar with it, Hygge, to put it succinctly, is a concoction of all delightful things that commence with the letter ‘c’: carrot cakes, cuddles, croissants, cushions, candlelight, cinnamon rolls, cocoa, cold weather and a crackling fire. But Winnie-the-Pooh said it best, “You don’t just spell it, you feel it.”
This year, God answered my prayers and paved a way to realize a long-standing dream of venturing into freelancing in Europe. I landed in Düsseldorf, a city with a ‘smiley’ in its name, with a long list of things I wanted to do in Europe. On top of my list, among working out of cafes, sampling German breads and other touristy things, was to visit the land of the Danes, and the birthplace of Hygge.
So, picking a weekend with no rainy forecast, I reached Copenhagen on a late Friday afternoon. At the address on my Airbnb booking, I was greeted by a smart house and its two furry occupants. The house itself was a cocoon of coziness with an open kitchen and a large bathroom lit by a skylight. The house came equipped with high-tech amenities and appliances — like a mirror in the bathroom that could connect to Bluetooth and play music, a toaster that came with an array of options and functions, a timed cat food dispenser and a cool water fountain. The curtains went down, and the dim lights turned on at sundown while I watched a Tom Hank’s movie sprawled on the sofa flanked by my fur-ball companions.
First item on hygge-hunt itinerary was the Happiness museum — a museum dedicated to the research and study of what makes people happy with a special focus on the most-hyped ingredient of Danish happiness — hygge. Each wall of the museum was covered in dashboards, that resembled Tableau dashboards similar to the ones I build for my clients, with fancy graphics and charts — except here, the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) measured was the elusive concept of ‘Happiness’. Each of these dashboards measured happiness across demographics like age, gender, wages, countries and such. My favourite dashboard was the one which revealed that married people were happier, but with a degree of modesty, speculated if marriage did actually make people happier or if happier people were more likely to get married (correlation vs. causation). The visit to the Happiness Museum was insightful and even though a lot of what was shared was intuitive, it was a pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Most evenings ended with me walking around the Nyhavn harbor, lined by old buildings with sloped rooftops facing the canal with the vintage boats. I was a tourist inside a classic Danish postcard. Copenhagen, for the most part, diverged from embodying the trademark coziness of hygge. With its sharp-edged modern architecture, dark toned buildings and chic furnishings, the city was a sleek stylish metropolis that unabashedly flaunted its wealth. Maybe my hopes were misplaced and too high in expecting it to exude hygge around every corner. I picked up some souvenirs, hygge magnets and postcards for friends before heading back to Germany.
One fine autumn evening in Düsseldorf, Tamara, my flat mate suggested we go out in the evening for a stroll. We headed out and walked alongside the Rhein until we hit Stadt strand (beach). We found a nice corner to sit down and watch the sun set across the shore on the Rhein. Tamara’s friends joined us shortly and soon we were ordering food and drinks, and a kind server got us a candle for our group. We pulled out our jackets as it started getting chilly. We sat there huddled together and talked for hours about many nothings. And suddenly, I thought to myself, “If this isn’t hygge, I don’t know what is.”
Later as I pondered over these events, I realised two things I had gotten wrong about hygge. (A) Hygge cannot be planned or staged, you cannot light a candle and experience hygge on-demand. It happens almost spontaneously, and when it does, treasure it like the rare precious event that it is and you definitely don’t need to be in the world’s happiest countries to experience it (B) Hygge is closely related to home and hearth as it were, but you can also experience it in a place far from home, in the company of strangers.
With Christmas, the most hyggelige festival, just around the corner, I hope your Christmas feels like a snug sweater worn on a cold wintery day, holding a mug of hot cocoa in front of the crackling fire, surrounded by your loved ones.
