The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Living Well

Just living isn't enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower." -Hans Christian Anderson

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. -Simone Weil

Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves for we shall never cease to be amused. -Proverb

He who knows contentment is rich. -Lao Tzu

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. -Annie Dillard

We still carry within us, in a small warm spot, the idea of home. Home as a safe place, a loving place and a creative place. Place of comfort and privacy. Place where we can explore our inner life. -Isla Crawford

I felt it shelter to speak to you. -Emily Dickinson

The most common form of despair is not being who you are. -Soren Kierkegaard

It is in the shelter of each other that the people live. -Irish proverb

Although home still represents stability in an unstable world, we're beginning to see that home can be how we live, a situation that we create and recreate. Home is less attached to bricks and mortar and more about the lives we lead, the ways that we connect with each other, the communities we build. Home is a state of mind, something we make for ourselves wherever we can. Hygge is the home we make in the flux and flow of our lives.

Home is an emotional state, a place in the imagination where feelings of security, belonging, placement, family, protection, memory and personal history abide. -Thomas Moore

Architecture is about the understanding of the world and turning it into a more meaningful and humane place. -Juhani Pallasmaa

Hygge is a quality of presence and an experience of togetherness. It is a feeling of being warm, safe, comforted and sheltered. Hygge is an experience of selfhood and communion with people and places that anchors and affirms us, gives us courage and consolation. To hygge is to invite intimacy and connection. It's a feeling of engagement and relatedness, of belonging to the moment and to each other. Hygge is a sense of abundance and contentment. Hygge is about being not having.

Hygge is our awareness of the scale of our existence in contrast to the immensity of life. It is our sense of intimacy and encounter with each other and with the creaturely world around us. It is the presence of nature calling us back to the present moment, calling us home.

Home should be a warm, liveable place that is alive, a place to please the eye and soothe the senses in scale, curves, colour, variety, pattern and texture. -Josef Frank

Inside each of us are memories, fantasies and desires for home - a shelter waiting to be built, a place of peace to be revisited.

Hygge is a phenomenon that reflects our way of inhabiting the world. The routines that shape our days locate us - from the places we visit to the small rituals that give us pause.

Hygge happens when we commit to the pleasure of the present moment in its simplicity. It's there in the things we do that give everyday life value and meaning, that comfort us, make us feel at home, rooted and generous.

...to hold twilight or watch it darken, describes the pleasure we take in pausing to observe as day slips into night. To stand at our window, wrapped in the half-dark and watch the day disappear... is a moment of hygge.

...how a familiar room slowly changes colour as morning arrives.

We do not remember days, we remember moments. -Cesare Pavese

When we hygger, we frame the moment, give it our full attention, savour and hold it, in an awareness that the moment will pass. We feel how one moment becomes layered on to the next; past and present mingled together - everything falling into place, into one accord.

If you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger. -Kahlil Gibran

How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this. I need someone to pour myself into. -Sylvia Plath

We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great love. -Mother Teresa

The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. -William Morris.

For years, home has been idealised as a refuge from the world, somewhere predictable and unchanging. But home isn't just where we go to escape the world. Home is how we inhabit the world. Meaning comes from connection and a willingness to pay attention to the particulars of our lives, from the things we choose to use to our daily rituals and shared activities.

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. Hygge is a vehicle for showing that we care. It's a way of paying attention to our children or partners and friends in the messy reality of the here and now, and putting down the distractions that pull us in different directions. So many of us are drawn to a virtual world of connectivity. Hygge isn't about a life without technology, but it asks us to balance our commitments and remember the value of human interaction, conversation and physical intimacy. It liberates us to fully inhabit the moment without feeling compelled to record it.

In paying attention to our wellbeing, we address the needs of our environment - the society that we live in and our planet. Sustainability depends on community - when we learn to be happily reliant on each other, we're less likely to turn to material consumption to meet our emotional needs.