The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well

I got this book as a speaker gift from a Danish conference. It was…lovely. And cute. And fun.

This is not a deep book. It explores the idea of “hygge” (pronounced “hoo-gah”), which is the Danish concept of “coziness.” It deconstructs it into it’s parts – what does it smell like, taste feel, feel like, etc? These are the different constituent parts that come together to create this feeling.

It’s an eclectic book. There are some recipes, a hygge tour of Copenhagen, and some semi-serious research into the concept of happiness (the book is published by The Happiness Research Institute, which is appropriate given that Denmark is commonly referred to as “the happiest country in the world”).

It’s a quick book. The page count is a bit high, but the pages are small (it’s a small, square-ish book), and there are lots of photographs, dozens of which are two-page spreads.

The book is…cute. And reading it felt hygge, it really did. The book is cozy, in and of itself, apart from the topic it’s discussing. It’s super meta that way.