What is HYGGE?

This weekend I launched the first edition of my ‘SIMPLY HYGGE’ magazine. I am overwhelmed by the response, and I am so proud you have all loved it. I have had so many lovely comments, and thumbs up, and I hope you ‘ll keep coming back to the blog for more HYGGE.

I am sharing the first article I wrote for the magazine, so you can get an idea on what hygge means to me.

The rest of the articles are in the magazine – so find the link for it here. If you fancy, I’d love for you to share the magazine with everyone you think would like to learn more about HYGGE. Happy Monday everyone – it is freezing cold, wintry and wet here today, the perfect day to sit in your favourite chair, read my magazine and sip tea. HYGGE at it’s best.

“Hygge is about finding pleasure in the small things in life. 

Making the ordinary feel extraordinary”

 

Did you know that the Danes have been voted the happiest people in the World. For quite a few years now? In Denmark we have a word or rather the concept of HYGGE. It is a word that has become a bit of a trendy word lately. I personally believe that hygge is the feeling of comfort, tranquility, simplicity, and something everybody has an ability to achieve anywhere in the World.

Hygge is all about wanting to make people feel good, and by achieving that, making yourself feel good. Hygge has to be unpretentious, and on a level where everyone can feel part of it.  If the ‘setting’ is too extravagant or staged, people find they have to perform, and they might start to feel slightly uneasy, and that’s not particularly hyggeligt.

Hygge to me is if you can be with your favourite people, have a laugh, keep it on a nice friendly level, where you don’t have to pretend to be anything you’re not. That makes you relaxed and happy, and the atmosphere becomes hyggelig.

Hygge is also embracing nature – come rain or shine, being in nature and taking care of it. Looking after each other, and making the small things in life matter.

LET ME TRY AND EXPLAIN:

HYGGE:  This is where you connect the word hygge with another word – Weekend hygge, Summer hygge, Christmas hygge, Evening hygge…

HYGGE: verb: ‘kom lad os gå hjem og hygge os’ (‘Come let us go home and hygge together’) – this is hygge with someone else.

HYGGELIG(T): adjective: et hyggeligt hus (a hyggeligt house) or if you had a hyggelig time with someone: “we had such a hyggelig night with you guys last night”!

Perhaps if we start by looking at the an- tonymous word “uhyggelig” we get an idea of what the opposite word means:

UHYGGELIG: adjective: something that makes you scared or terrified. ‘En uhyggelig drøm’ ‘My daughter came into my bedroom last night – she had an ‘uhyggelig’ dream’

In our materialistic, busy, and increasingly digital society, it is becoming more and more important to relax and slow down, and take pleasures in what we have. Not what we can get, but what we can give, and how we can make this Planet a better place to be. That is exactly what hygge is all about, and this is what I wanted to share with you here.

If you mention to your children that you are going home to hygge every child will have their own perception of what that means:  For some it means going to the bakery, buying a tasty treat, and eating it at home – maybe with a hot drink.

For others, it means gathering lots of cushions, huddling up together on the sofa and watching a good film, or TV show, whilst eating popcorn.

Or it might be going for a brisk walk in the forest, and afterwards going home, and getting warm, rosy-cheeked and happy.

The perceptions are all different, but it is almost always something you do with the people you care about. If you are on your own though, it is also very easy to create hygge: a warm cozy blanket, a tub of ice cream and a good film on Netflix – the quintessence of hygge too.