© 2024 WMRA and WEMC
WMRA : More News, Less Noise WEMC: The Valley's Home for Classical Music
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Forget Your Troubles, Come On, Get Hygge

A typical "hygge" scene, with warm pastries, soft lighting and a copy of Meik Wiking's "Little Book Of Hygge." (Valerie_bd/Instagram)
A typical "hygge" scene, with warm pastries, soft lighting and a copy of Meik Wiking's "Little Book Of Hygge." (Valerie_bd/Instagram)

Danes are the happiest people in the world. They say they get there with hygge – coziness. We’ll ask how that works.

Guests

Penelope Green, style reporter for the New York Times. (@greenpnyt)

Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute and research associate for Denmark at the World Database of Happiness. Author of the new book, “The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way To Live Well.” (@meikwiking)

Abbey Collins, reporter for KHNS news in Haines, Alaska. Former On Point Radio producer. (@abigail_collins)

From Tom’s Reading List

New York Times: Move Over, Marie Kondo: Make Room for the Hygge Hordes — “Denmark frequently tops lists of the happiest countries in the world, in surveys conducted by the United Nations, among other organizations, consistently beating its Scandinavian cousins, Sweden and Norway — as well as the United States, which hovers around 13th place. While all three Nordic countries share happiness boosters like small populations and the attendant boons of a welfare state (free education, subsidized child care and other generous social supports), what distinguishes Denmark is its quest for hygge.”

New Yorker: The Year Of Hygge, The Danish Obsession With Getting Cozy — “Winter is the most hygge time of year. It is candles, nubby woolens, shearling slippers, woven textiles, pastries, blond wood, sheepskin rugs, lattes with milk-foam hearts, and a warm fireplace. Hygge can be used as a noun, adjective, verb, or compound noun, like hyggebukser, otherwise known as that shlubby pair of pants you would never wear in public but secretly treasure. Hygge can be found in a bakery and in the dry heat of a sauna in winter, surrounded by your naked neighbors.”

The Guardian: The Hygge Conspiracy— “But for all the earnest cultural analyses, linguistic glosses and quotations from Kierkegaard, it is the images, more or less common in style to each title, that one falls for: hands cupping warm mugs; bicycles leaning against walls; sheepskin rugs thrown over chairs; candles and bonfires; summer picnics; trays of fresh-baked buns. To look at them is to long for that life, that warmth, that peace, that stability – for that idealized, Instagrammable Denmark of the imagination.”

Read An Excerpt Of “The Little Book Of Hygge” By Meik Viking

Array

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.