Pater Familias

Theories, observations, and articles, by Philip Schaefer · All posts · Categories

WINTER AND HYGGE.

December 3, 2014 at 6:40 PM · Uncategorized

WINTER AND HYGGE. I posted on the Danish concept of hygge on Thanksgiving. I had never encountered the word until a short time ago, and, as sometimes happens, I encountered the word a second time soon thereafter. I encountered it in a review in the TLS (November 14) by Bee Wilson of THE MAKING OF HOME by Judith Flanders. The book is a history of the British concept of “home”. Wilson says, quoting Flanders: “Curtains….make possible the kind of cosiness—the Danish word is hygge—that can only be found inside ‘when set against a real or metaphorical cold world outside.'”

So a winter like last year’s makes hygge more attainable.