Friday evening – we were already very dazed at 9:00 p.m. and jumped from the four Wegbier tipsy around the neighborhood. Also in January. Youth, freedom .. oh, slipped into a country before our time! Now everything is different, you go to friends for a drink – and "maybe later in a bar or something, if it's not too cold". The journey has already taken three tides because they now live in the "good" district. Because of the kindergarten quality and probably because the street lamps shine brighter. No matter. After all, the beers stay nice and cold in winter, I think and ring the bell. And you can also smoke in the kitchen.
But then it gets thick. Empty red wine bottles in the stairwell! But not in the Assi style, but rather à la French winery with candles on it. One of these mini pillows hangs on the front door: "Sweet home, happiness alone!" It smells of lavender. Half paralyzed, half swallowing the bile, I wait until the door opens. Then there are the friends, in colored Ikea slippers, turtleneck wool sweaters – I didn't even know that there were such portable heaters – and blankets over my shoulders as if they were Canadian trappers hunting reindeer. "Nice to see you there. We just made it hygge," they say, with a smile straight from "The Shining". Yes cool, I think. I'll make myself hygge. Forever. With the shotgun in his mouth.
The Danish virus
"Have you already unpacked the board games?" – My friends think it's only half funny. The beer ends up on the kitchen table, not even in the fridge. Whether I want a warm cup of tea. It twists my thinking muscle. Are they crazy now? Am I around 60 plus ?! Next they put on Chopin, press a Monet painting in my hand and a Xanax in my throat to relax. In the living room it is as stuffy and warm as during a train ride in midsummer. This hygge, I still think, and sip the valerian tea, is psychological warfare.
Short, historical excursion: "Hygge" is actually nothing new and guarantees no magic either. The Danes (and later Norwegians) like to make themselves "hyggelig" since the last century – which means something like a cozy, soothing, safe atmosphere surrounded by the oh so lovely people. In the dark winter months in particular, this contributed to mental health and social entertainment – exactly, today there are smartphones for this. In general, people in northern countries believe in homeliness, which means wood everywhere, stylish furniture, cinnamon buns in every drawer. Like Ikea.
Hygge, you me too!
Actually, all is well and good, dear Scandinavians, you are allowed to do that. We also have our methods of comfort, such as drinking mulled wine and family quarrels at Christmas. The problem is much more that the Hygge concept has been relentlessly exploited internationally since 2016 at the latest, just because a marketing Heini filled with salmon meant after a business trip to Copenhagen that it was selling. Congratulations, you sausage, do it too! Now we live in a world of interiors filled with scented candles, pillows and wool socks. Substantial fiction such as "The Little Art of Hygge" lies on the coffee tables in Germany and everything smells of penetrable sugar-sweet pastries for four months.
Sure, dog weather dominates from November to the end of February. Of course you can and should make yourself comfortable there – but this "artificial-the-fireplace-is-my-sanctuary" atmosphere packed in cotton wool, all the outrageously tasteless lifestyle books, the truckloads of inedible tea variations against stress, lack of vitamins, yellow fever – it doesn't need all of that to be cozy. Relaxed good German at the kitchen table with a Mett bun. Fight your way through the cold for a beer in the corner pub. Or go to the cinema for my sake and watch Star Wars Episode 200. But send the skins back to the Arctic Circle and this hygge back to Denmark.