Hygge!

I have now been in Denmark for over two weeks now! My time has been filled with incredible experiences of meeting new people, learning new things, being comfortable outside of my comfort zone, and enjoying every second of it.

If you haven’t heard, Denmark has a word/feeling/expression called hygge (pronounced hoo-guh), which doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. A rough translation to English would be a relaxed social atmosphere, coziness, warmth, but it’s so much more. In my Danish Language and Culture class, we’ve talked a lot about hygge, since us Americans are so fascinated by it. Hygge is everywhere in Denmark. You can say that a cute coffee shop is hygge, decorated with candles, blankets, and pillows, you can say a person is hygge, you can use hygge as a verb, hygge is everything.

What’s special about hygge is that is directly reflects Danish cultural and societal meanings. Linnet Trollet Jeppe explains it in her article, “Money Can’t Buy Me Hygge,” as so:

Hygge figures as a marker of ‘real’ togetherness, which is opposed to experiences that are either exotic and dramatic or luxorious and characterized by some degree as ‘overdoing it’, as something that goes beyond what is necessary or ‘enough’ for enjoying close, hyggelige social relations and, indeed, makes a hyggelig atmosphere less likely to arise…. This suggests a connection between the middle-class morality described above and a powerful normative notion concerning hygge—that (‘realness’) decreases with the attainment of material wealth and high prestige, which, in the social imaginary of the middle class, is what the upper classes seek.

From that passage, and from the article as a whole, I’ve learned so much about Danish culture – about politics, about social trust, how they define happiness, (Denmark is the happiest country in the world!), what they value most in life. This, along with what I see and experience each day has made me fall in love with this country.

This is a cute video about hygge if you want some more insight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl74ybpyNLk