The hygge mood is all about feeling cozy, comfortable, and content. It’s that feeling you get when you’re surrounded by things that make you happy, like a warm blanket, a hot drink, and your favorite book or movie. Good food and drinks: Hygge is all about indulging in the little things that bring you joy, and that includes delicious food and drinks. Whether it’s a cup of tea, a glass of wine, or a bowl of comfort food, treating yourself to something tasty is a great way to get into the hygge spirit.

Almost nothing written about hygge in Britain suggests that it has a troubling side. Wiking’s book does mention that hygge may sometimes feel excluding to outsiders. “It would be considered less hyggelig if there were too many new people at an event.” Foreigners, he told me, find it hard to penetrate tight-knit Danish social circles: hygge can only really exist within groups who know each other already. But he stops well short of the kind of critique that, for instance, Dorthe Nors brought to bear when we spoke. “Somewhere along the way, hygge became a form of social control,” said the Danish author, whose novel Mirror, Shoulder, Signal will be published in Britain in February. “It’s a little like ‘feel-good’ in America – the cult of the ‘feel-good’ book or the ‘feel-good’ movie. It’s a cocoon.” Linda Åkeson McGurk, a Scandinavian mom who married an American noticed and after moving to the states how differently people handled the weather. She wrote a book titled There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom’s Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids. However, for others, it’s a difficult time of year in part because the holiday season can be hard, but also because of winter blues and a distaste for all things cold weather.

Hygge home essentials

In fact, the mood of 2016 could even be described as uhygge. The word does not, precisely, mean uncosy – it does not summon up sharp-angled open-plan offices with severe furniture. It means frightening; it means sinister. If hygge is sitting round the campfire, all differences forgotten, warmed by the dancing flames, uhygge is the darkness beyond that enchanted circle. Uhygge, in fact, threatens to engulf the warmth, the solidarity, the kindness. In the unfathomable bleakness of uhygge exist those terrible things from the outside that could destroy you. On some atavistic, deep-buried level, migrants, refugees, and those with starkly different values, bring with them the fearful perfume of uhygge. Warm blankets and throws: Snuggling up under a soft and fluffy blanket is one of life’s simple pleasures. Whether you’re curling up on the couch with a good book or watching your favorite show, a cozy blanket is a must-have for any hygge setup.

You CAN find outdoor activities that will make you happy, and the Danes know this to be true, considering more than half their year is spent at freezing temps or below. What’s their secret, be prepared… When you can’t seem to enjoy winter because you hate it, it definitely seems like it lasts forever. Thankfully it doesn’t, but what better way to shorten that time due to a newfound lifestyle with hygge activities and ideas? Once treasured by Inca Royalty for its unique strength, lustre and slippery softness, Alpaca wool (or alpaca hair as it is also called) has a hollow fibre which renders it uniquely light and up to 30% warmer than the same weight of merino wool. The series, with its darkness and violence, exemplifies uhygge – and yet the viewer will, most likely, experience it from the safety and warmth of the family home, bottle of wine open, heating turned up. A detective story is a way of dealing with the dark: it is about gathering and containing death and horror within a safe and predictable narrative structure. Hygge does the same work through different means: it draws us in towards warmth and togetherness and forgetting. But it also somehow depends on the existence of the dark, too. In Wiking’s book there’s a remark to the effect that an especially hyggelig situation he remembered (the scent of a stew simmering on the stove, an open fire, a group of friends) could have become more hyggelig with the addition of just one thing: a raging storm outside.At the heart of hygge is a willingness to set aside time for simply being with people, and, ideally, having all the time in the world for them.”– Louise Thomsen Brits, The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Living Well And don’t forget that happiness isn’t found in stuff; hygge is about connecting with people and nature and embracing a slower way of living) Hygge Winter Indoor Activities: Since we spend a third, if not half, of our lives in bed, this room is vital for creating a warm and cozy feeling of hygge. It is not only the start of your day when you open your eyes, but it is the last area surrounding you each night. Essentially creating a home away from home for your friends and family, as a huge part of hygge is bringing people together. Find uses for the things you haven’t been able to part with, no matter how ruthlessly you tried to purge your home.Or if you can’t, that tells you it’s time for it to go. A Hygge Winter Wonderland, Your Bedroom

First and foremost, hygge is all about finding comfort and coziness in the little things. When we’re surrounded by soft blankets, warm lighting, and our favorite foods and drinks, we can’t help but feel happy and content. It’s like a big warm hug for our souls!A case in point is Pia Kjærsgaard, the founder of the anti-immigration, anti-Brussels Danish People’s Party, which is currently the second-largest party in parliament. Kjærsgaard has subtly projected herself as the protector of Danish hygge against the unknown forces of the globalised world. According to Nors: “Hygge is part of the whole set-up of the radical right wing in Denmark. Their commercials will have all the emblematic hygge symbols.” I thought some people might think it was a slightly poncey, head-scratching idea,” he said. In fact, his article, published on 2 October 2015, received over a million hits, and was outread that day by only five stories – two pieces on a school shooting in Oregon, and articles on Syria, terrorism and cancer. It was a small island of cheer on a grim news day. The article was immediately followed up by others in the Express, the Independent on Sunday and the Telegraph, the beginning of an extraordinary spike in hygge coverage: in 2015, the word appeared in 40 pieces in national newspapers. This year, that figure has shot up to more than 200, a bump of 400% – and that’s not counting the huge proliferation of articles in blogs and lifestyle magazines.