Hygge

   To just look at the word hygge, one might be puzzled even if this has become a recent trend that has appeared in books and headlines throughout the world (if you're interested, it's pronounced HOO-guh).  Ah those Danes, makers of some terrific films and books, as if challenging rivals Sweden and Norway to up the ante (and all to our benefit).  As a few examples, glimpse of snow and deep powder (living in it, not skiing in it) by peeking at the quirky Norweigan movie, In Order of Disappearance (which Liam Neeson will remake and star in), or the even quirkier Swedish/Danish collaboration, The Bridge (which portrayed a bit of this alledged rivalry between Denmark and Sweden and was remade by Sky in the UK as the series, The Tunnel).  Hygge!  Despite what one may hear, the term hygge basically comes down to defining the feeling of happiness that comes from being snuggled and cozy with friends, something the Danes been practicing for ages (think Zen with friends).

   As ELLE wrote: ...economists and social scientists usually attribute Denmark's consistent ranking as one of the world's happiest countries to its free, government-sponsored education and health care, as well as a progressive tax system that tamps down inequality.  But lately the academic set has been giving hygge some credit too.  Watch a few of the countrie's films and you may pick up on a simplicity, that IKEA mode of minimalism.  As author Louisa Thomsen Brits wrote in her Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Contentment, Comfort, and Connection: ...we are not ignoring difficulty but putting it down for a while.  Pain and shadow still exist on the periphery.  We acknowledge their presence and prepare ourselves to address them by committing ourselves to the pleasures of the present moment, in order to regain momentum and cope with life with equanimity in the future.  Sounds good, right?  But some of this outlook was viewed askance by a review in The Guardian which quotenew book, The Little Book of Hygge: Danes are not good at inviting new people into their friendship circles.  In part, this is due to the concept of hygge; it would be considered less hyggeligt if there were too many new people at an event.  So getting into a new circle requires a lot of effort and a lot of loneliness on the way.

   Viewed from afar (and as one of those not living in or from the countries), I can only guess at how all of this is portrayed as shown by some of the comments from the Quora site:  1) It's sometimes hard to adjust to the Danish way of living and socializing.  Danes are not as forthright about friendship and love as other people, but the cultural difference isn't going to be very big in Sweden...2) Copenhagen is a very friendly place, and almost everyone speaks English.  But it can be difficult to make real friends with Danish people simply because many Danes don't move around much, and we tend to hold on to old friendships.  This tends to decrease our willingness to actively seek out new friends.  On the other hand, if you yourself are outgoing and warm, it shouldn't be too difficult to make new friends.  Watching many of the films on sites such as Netflix and Amazon, one could get the impression that as beautiful as the countries are, the smiles seem few...but therein might rest the perceived problem.

    Whenever one steps way back, say in the view from space, we humans can seem to be all the same (much as we would view ants); it is only when one begins to come closer that one can start to see the different colors and sizes and sexes and attitudes, perhaps even the cultures.  But viewing what one reads (as in this example, of Sweden and Denmark), one can only take away what one is told.  Was Denmark once the largest all-encompassing country in Europe (yes); was Denmark the first country in the world to declare itself a country (yes); was Denmark the first country to create a flag declaring itself such (yes, about 250 years ahead of anyone else); was much of Denmark overtaken by Sweden and Germany (yes).  Some of this was at a time when ocean waters didn't separate Britain from the rest of Europe, a time before the Vikings; but as The Week magazine quoted Le Temps: The Danes’ empire crumbled in the 19th century, and they lost control of land in Germany, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway.  Rather than bemoaning their diminished status, Danes decided to embrace it and “identify with simplicity.”  Their defeat “was not deplored as a loss, but celebrated as a gain.”  Delight in simple pleasures is now a national trait, indeed, it’s a source of patriotic pride.  Hygge is “the feeling that one is safe, sheltered from the world.” 

    Until one actually dives into the culture and and history of any peoples it can be easy to lock in an image of a place in generalities (think of your impressions of Syria).  But then even after one visits a country, that view as a tourist will only shaped by the experiences you had, good or bad...did you visit the big cities or did you hike solo through the country, did you stop to ask for help or did you walk past strangers because you didn't know the language?   Often we can think that we know much about a place or a people but in truth, we may have visited and chatted with only a very few and from that, gained our image of an entire country.  Think of your own neighborhood and the image you have of it?  Yet how many people on your street do you actually know and how they feel and what they do?  And what of the next street, or the next town or the town after that?  Life is complicated...and yet, hygge.

    What hygge appears to embrace is simplicity, and not a trendy simplicity but a something that works for them.  Clean lines and little clutter, both physically and mentally.  A minimalism, and likely certainly not embraced or practiced by all but yet an attitude apparently celebrated by many.  It's similar to the message of Atul Gawande's piece in The New Yorker on incrementalism and how we (as patients and doctors both) seem to want instant relief and results, but statistics are proving it better to have the long-term view, in this case a return to our primary doctors and not to specialists.  Asaf (Asaf Bitton, a thirty-nine-year-old internist) tried to explain.  “It’s no one thing we do.  It’s all of it,” he said.  I found this unsatisfying.  I pushed everyone I met at the clinic.  How could seeing one of them for my—insert problem here—be better than going straight to a specialist?  Invariably, the clinicians would circle around to the same conclusion.  “It’s the relationship,” they’d say.

    That seems to be the essence of hygge or comfort or contentment or any of a dozen terms people around the world call it.  Some might even call it minimalism, of getting to what one really needs instead of what one really wants; and as minimalists Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Millburn say in the film Minimalism:  Love people and use things, because the other way around just doesn't work.  Hygge...quite likely, the underlying theme of it all is that you don't need any of the books, just friends, smiles or not.