The key ideas

The Little Book of Hygge

Meik Wiking, 2016

You had free time, but you don't feel rested. The Danes have a word for what such an evening is missing: “hygge.” Warm light, people you love and the chance to simply be here. The head of Copenhagen's Happiness Research Institute explains how this coziness works and why it hardly requires buying anything. And also what hygge can offer and what it doesn't promise.

Who it is for

For anyone whose free evenings often slip away into tiredness and screens, and for everyone who wants home and time with loved ones to give them more warmth.

Hygge is about an atmosphere and an experience, rather than about things. It is about being with the people we love.

What the book is about

Your free evening has finally arrived. The chores are done, and nobody needs anything from you. And three hours later, you get up from the sofa with a heavy head and the feeling that you never actually rested. You had the time, but it's as if the evening never happened.

Meik Wiking runs the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. He opens the book with one winter evening. Shortly before Christmas, he and his friends spent a weekend in an old cabin. The sun set around four; they lit a fire and sat in a semicircle around it, in thick sweaters and wool socks. Someone asked whether it could get any cozier. One of his friends answered: yes, if there were a storm raging outside.

The Danes have a special word for this state: hygge. This book isn't a scientific treatise but a warm guidebook: the author's observations, surveys by his institute and plenty of Danish habits. It's easy to read it as a guide to buying candles. But inside is a more interesting question: what exactly turns an ordinary evening into rest?

Idea 1. A mood you can create

The word “hygge” is hard to translate. According to the author, it came from Norwegian, where it meant something like “well-being,” and it appeared in Danish writing about two hundred years ago. It also has an adjective: hyggelig.

Wiking explains: hygge is about an atmosphere and an experience, not a set of objects. It's time with the people you love, when you can let your shoulders drop and don't have to defend yourself against anyone.

This changes the angle. Rest stops being “free time” that will somehow fill itself. It becomes a mood you can create.

Two evenings on the same sofa. In the first, you scroll your feed until your eyes hurt. In the second, there's tea brewing, a lamp is on and someone close to you is nearby. The same sofa, but a different evening.

Free time can stay empty if it has no atmosphere. Sometimes it's more useful to create rest in advance than to wait for it to appear on its own.

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About the author

Meik Wiking is a Danish happiness researcher and the founder and CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. “The Little Book of Hygge” became an international bestseller.

All books by this author: Meik Wiking

Terms from the book

  • Hygge: A Danish word for an atmosphere of coziness, warmth and calm closeness with other people. There's no exact translation into English.
  • Hyggelig: The adjective from “hygge”: cozy, inviting you to relax. You can say it about a place, an evening, a thing or a person.
  • Hyggekrog: A cozy nook at home where you can settle in with a blanket, a book and tea. A Danish household tradition, as the author describes it.
  • Hygge Manifesto: Ten points Meik Wiking uses to describe hygge: atmosphere, presence, pleasure, equality, gratitude, harmony, comfort, truce, togetherness and shelter. The author's framework, not a scientific method.
  • Color temperature: A measure of the tint of light in kelvins: the lower the number, the warmer and more yellow the light. A candle is about 1,800 kelvins, a camera flash about 5,500.

All terms

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