As I walked from the kitchen into my workroom on a recent winter morning, I noticed one too-tall sprig of white pine in an arrangement I had made for the mantel. It needed only a minor adjustment, but the symmetry of the boughs in the clear glass pitcher mattered. Setting down my coffee and a bowl of hot cereal on the wooden table in the corner, I gave a slight tug to the two shorter branches. All was well. Breakfast lay ahead, along with my daily reading and writing.
How I look forward to these mornings in winter! Snowbirds we know have decamped to Arizona for golf or to California for days on the beach, but my husband and I are at home. In fact, we’re happy to be here, right now, because it’s winter.
Frost decorates my bedroom window with icy designs and I put on an extra sweater for a morning walk. Eagerly I claim my Danish heritage and my entitlement to the Danes’ concept of hygge, having felt its subtle influence on me for many years.
A book I was given during the holidays has enhanced my grasp of this way of life. Hygge, according to the author of The Book of Hygge, is the “art of contentment, comfort, and connection.” Creating hygge in our homes and in our lives requires paying attention to habits and routines. It calls for inventing practices that foster our own sense of ease but that also offer the possibility of shared pleasure and connection among family and friends. Being conscious of hygge, we focus on the furniture, decorative objects and arrangement of our spaces; the sense of warmth and access to light; what we prepare for meals; and also, very importantly, how we welcome others into our homes.
Even as a young bride, when both my husband and I were in graduate school, I looked to create spaces in my life that would somehow “work,” for whatever I needed to do. For our small Manhattan apartment near Union Seminary during years when we counted our pennies, we bought a wreck of an antique chair that we knew we needed. My husband refinished it in the shop of the church where he worked, I took it to the Lighthouse for the Blind to be caned, and we set it in front of our western window and negotiated times to sit in it. That chair got me get through the challenges of an advanced degree in English that might otherwise have seemed impossible.
Warmth and light are another part of the equation in making the spaces we have into ones we are happy to settle into — especially on winter nights. For many of us here in Vermont, our fireplaces and wood stoves are nearly as essential as family members or pets. My heritage has included learning to knit and quilt, and in my current collection of afghans and wraps are a few pieces I’ve made myself, along with many handed down over the years. I get them out of the trunk in the attic each fall and spread them around the house where they can be used. A lap blanket put together by an Iowa grandmother brings layers of warmth to a granddaughter in another era.
Hot water bottles are also part of family routines when nights are cold. I have to credit that tradition to one of my daughters. As a student, she lived one winter in a Berlin apartment where her only heat came from a large, elegant coal stove in the main room, whose fuel had to be fetched daily from the basement. Her bedroom temperature, needless to say, remained arctic.
Varieties of candles often seem like a nice gift, and they are. With electricity in every room, we may need encouragement to use candles too. But once we light a votive in the dining room after dinner or burn a chunky taper in a sconce over the kitchen sink when the dishes are done, we might change our perspective. Coming back toward the house with the dog after his nightly outing is different when there’s a candle in the window.
Hygge also makes suggestions about food: Meals are nourishing and often simple. Soups, stews and creamy casseroles meet up with salads on a table set with familiar placemats and everyday dishes. Making dinner doesn’t have to take all afternoon; sometimes selections from a grocery store shelf are just as good. And inviting guests over enhances the pleasure.
Looking at the details of our routines from this Danish-inspired point of view can be illuminating. Hygge offers small ways of tempering the harshness of the season and of life itself.
Mary K. Otto lives in Norwich.