It was my birthday last week.  I was in Wales on holiday with my family at the time and my sister confessed to having forgotten the upcoming anniversary on my arrival at the holiday cottage a couple of days before the event itself.  Anyhoo, on the morning of my birthday, I was pleasantly surprised to be presented with a gift bag from her.  It contained a cards from my sister and my niece, a candy skull air freshener for my car and a small hard-backed book entitled “The Little Book of Hygge: the Danish way to live well”.  My eyes rolled audibly: here she goes again, trying to make me eat vegetables and lose weight.

She’s never happy with me, that one: “You’ve got to stop smoking”; “you dirnk too much, cut down”; “you eat rubbish”; “you need to eat a breakfast”.  Even when do all those things, there’s always something else.  “Why have you put so much weight on?”  Probably because I stopped smoking and she makes me eat a breakfast.  My diet is actually OK if you reduce the fat, salt and sugar, and introduce more vegetables while halving the portion sizes.  There’s also the tablets that I take for depression that can cause weight gain.  Plus the fact that I’m a lazy, greedy, fat slob.  But despite my continuously expanding form, the little book she bought me for my birthday shows me that I am pretty much there when it comes to hygge (pronounced something like hue-gah).  I am living the thygge life, astwer.

Hygge is hard to define, but if you think of cooking a meal with two or three friends, and you’re all wearing Sarah Lund jumpers and the best woollen socks ever and you’re drinking mulled wine in a log cabin with a roaring fire and lots of candles while lolling around on sheepskins or wrapped in blankets and playing board games, that kind of sums it up.  It’s that feeling you get when it’s a bit miserable outside so you close the blinds, turn on some dimmed lights (or light a load of candles), settle into your favourite armchair alongside the snoring dog with a lovely cup of sweet, strong coffee (maybe with a splash of whisky) and immerse yourself in your favourite book or film while the aromas of the casserole that’s cooking in the oven gradually emerge from the kitchen and evolve. Being with your favourite people and sharing simple experiences with them, laughing until you cry.  That moment when the sunshine changes from winter cold to spring warmth, that’s hygge.

It’s kind of the Zen of your experiences and environment.  Or it might not be, what do I know?

From reading Meik Wiking’s book, it seems that having access to resources like a Copenhagen apartment and a cabin in the woods, or being able to sail, go canoeing along rivers and ski in the Alps, these things are all VERY hygge.

What strikes me about hygge is that we all have it, irrespective of where we grew up or live, it’s just that certain cultures and language have managed to come up with words for it.  Others may not have words for hygge, but it’s so nice to stop and recognise it by being more in tune with ourselves, our environment and our relationships.

I painted a picture while I was on my holibobs, totes hygge.