The growing quest for hygge culture

New York

AS soothing as a video of a basket of baby sloths, and borne on a raft of lifestyle books, hygge is headed for your living room.

Hygge (pronounced HOO-gah, like a football cheer in a Scandinavian accent) is the Danish word for cozy. It is also a national manifesto, nay, an obsession expressed in the constant pursuit of homespun pleasures involving candlelight, fires, fuzzy knitted socks, porridge, coffee, cake and other people. But no strangers, as the Danes, apparently, are rather shy. Hygge is already such a thing in Britain that the Collins Dictionary proclaimed it one of the top 10 words of 2016, along with Brexit and Trumpism.

Denmark frequently tops lists of the happiest countries in the world, in surveys conducted by the United Nations, among other organisations, consistently beating its Scandinavian cousins, Sweden and Norway - as well as the United States, which hovers around 13th place. While all three Nordic countries share happiness boosters such as small populations and the attendant boons of a welfare state (free education, subsidised child care and other generous social support…