Europe | Danish culture

Cocoa by candlelight

Why do so many foreigners want to copy Denmark?

Topping the cosiness index
|COPENHAGEN

HOW big is the world’s appetite for things Danish? Foreign audiences have already binge-watched the country’s noir TV series (such as “The Killing” and “The Bridge”) and raved over the new Nordic cuisine of Noma, Copenhagen’s trend-setting restaurant. This autumn, publishers are testing the limits of the world’s Danomania. Before the Christmas season, at least nine English-language books will come out devoted to explaining the elusive quality of hygge.

Hygge is difficult to pronounce. (Try “hew-geh”.) It is also tricky to describe. Writers have tried “the art of creating intimacy”, “cosiness of the soul” and “cocoa by candlelight”. It is an attitude rather than a recipe, evoking relaxation with close friends or family. Many see it as a quintessential element of Denmark’s national character. There is some evidence for this: the Danes are Europe’s biggest consumers of candles, burning through about 6 kilogrammes (13 pounds) per person every year. Runner-up Austria manages just half that. Denmark often leads (highly subjective) rankings of the happiest countries, and hygge is being marketed as a way for foreigners to imitate the Danes’ balanced, relaxed, egalitarian lifestyle.

But not all Danes agree. Jeppe Trolle Linnet, an anthropologist at the University of Southern Denmark, argues that hygge is not the great social leveller it appears. Danes dislike acknowledging class differences, but his research finds that the habits of hygge vary by income and social status. For some, hygge is a bottle of burgundy with soft jazz on the hi-fi; for others it is a can of beer while watching football on telly. Worse, different groups are uncomfortable with others’ interpretations of hygge. Mr Linnet calls it a “vehicle of social control”, involving “a negative stereotyping of social groups who are perceived as unable to create hygge”.

In this, hygge resembles the German quality of gemütlichkeit, which also implies a sense of cosiness, peace of mind and—crucially—social acceptance. And although the desire for communality does encourage social solidarity, it can also mean excluding strangers. Getting to hygge with a local is not always easy: in Denmark even crowded buses can be eerily silent. Danes have a reputation for aloofness.

A recent report on the quality of life for expatriates in 67 countries, compiled by an organisation called InterNations, bears this out. Denmark’s own natives may rank it top for happiness, but the immigrants in the survey ranked it 60th in terms of friendliness, 64th for being made to feel welcome, and 67th for the ease of finding friends. Finishing just ahead of Denmark on the finding-friends measure was Norway, the country from which the Danes imported the word hygge. If cultures are obsessed with the joys of relaxing with old friends, perhaps it is because they find it stressful to make new ones.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "Cocoa by candlelight"

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