'Hygge' heaven
Uniquely Danish state of mind easier to find than to define
COPENHAGEN -- Even though I travel a lot, I'm a homebody at heart. So is my Danish friend Trine. She's an artist, and her current work involves photographing small things around her apartment. Actually, that's not completely accurate. Lately she's ventured out into her apartment building's courtyard.
Trine was my guide on a recent visit to Copenhagen in which a kind of homebody-ness seemed a wonderful virtue. That's because, more than anything else, she wanted me to experience the Danish state of being called ''hygge" (pronounced sort of like ''hooga" if you form your mouth for ''ee" instead of ''oo"). ''Hygge" is pretty much untranslatable, though words like ''cozy," ''snug," or ''feel-good" approach the meaning. An occasion that evokes hygge will be generous, familiar, unchallenging, and happy. Friends will raise toasts, most likely over candlelight or an open fire.
During my trip, Trine and I and her friends spent a lot of hygge time over a flickering candle, drinking excellent Danish beers while thick cigarette smoke swirled around us (Copenhagen, by the way, is the wrong city for squeamish, prissy American non-smoker types). But we also found hygge in some surprising places.
The day I arrived, a bunch of young people with lots of piercings and tattoos were squatting at an abandoned house at the corner of Trine's street in the hip Norrebro neighborhood. It was some type of protest regarding the lack of affordable housing. Police already had arrested everyone once, but the group returned. The police told the landlord it was now his problem. ''This neighborhood is full of anarchists," Trine told me.
That little demonstration, however, was nothing compared with the 7,000 or so people who later showed up downtown to voice support for the city's famed enclave, Christiania.
Christiania, or ''Freetown," is an 80-acre section of the city that once was a military fortress. In 1971, a group of free-loving squatters moved into the abandoned area and started their own community opposed to the whole idea of government and police. Houses were built. Schools and businesses followed. Sanitation and postal services were established. Community problems are solved by residents who meet until a consensus is reached. Criminals are tried by the community and punished by eviction. By the late 1980s, the Danish government finally recognized Christiania as a ''social experiment." Four years later, it approved the community, and in return the residents started paying community taxes. About 800 adults and 200 children live in Christiania. The community has its own newspaper, radio station, cinema, cafes, and bars, but no roads or cars.
Christiania, however, is most famous for Pusher Street, where over a dozen market stalls openly sell hash and marijuana (which are not legal in Denmark). This appears to be the flashpoint for the current right-leaning government that took office in 2001 and has threatened to ''normalize" the area, knocking down many of the homes, building roads, and ending the soft drug trade.
Skeptical Danes believe the government really wants to take back a beautiful green area of the city, along a lovely canal, and sell it off to high-end real estate developers. Many non-hippie citizens of Copenhagen are sympathetic to Christiania as a manifestation of their country's eccentric, anti-authoritarian character. Denmark, after all, rejected the euro, and holds fast to its kroner.
And Christiania is Copenhagen's second-biggest tourist attraction. ''It may be illegal and run down, but to many it's a branded symbol of Denmark, alongside design, architecture, and personal liberty. It fits nicely in with foreigners' perception of Danes as a talented, tolerant, and laid-back nation," an official with the Danish tourist board was quoted as saying in the Copenhagen Post.
Perhaps that's why so many people turned out on that late August day waving Christiania's flag -- three yellow dots on a red background. Quite a few of them also openly smoked marijuana, and by nightfall the demonstrators migrated to Christiania and the whole thing turned into a big party.
Our group, which by then included a bassist for a thrash metal band, a bossanova singer, and a former circus performer, passed underneath the wooden totem-pole-style arch into Christiania and into another world. A huge banner hung over Pusher Street read, ''Say NO To Hard Drugs." The lighted stalls were doing a brisk business. Fat Bob Marley-style pre-rolled joints were for sale next to bags of skunk and Thai stick. Big blocks of hash were set out for display like baked goods. Handwritten signs were posted everywhere reading ''No Photos."
Thousands mobbed the community that night, many of them wearing the popular bright red ''Bevar Christiania" (Save Christiania) sweatshirts. The cool late summer air was full of pungent smoke thicker than a Phish show.
Bands played on several stages throughout the community. My favorite was the stage near the skateboard park, which featured a half-dozen Danish rappers. The rosy-cheeked youth in the audience, in between tokes, seemed to have all the studied hip-hop gestures down pat.
In the early morning, sitting around the fire in a stupor of happiness, Trine whispered to me that the evening had been pretty hygge.
. . .
Over the next few days, we revisited Christiania and it was, unsurprisingly, much quieter and mellower. People went about their business -- selling arts and crafts and hash, fixing roofs, riding around on unique Christiania-made tricycles with a wooden cargo compartment in front. There were dozens of towheaded kids playing. In a square near the cafe Mannfiskenen (The Moonfisher), a young man with blond dreadlocks amused people by balancing a bright orange ball on his arms, shoulders, and fingertips.
I wanted to see some of the squatters' homes. So we climbed a trail above Nemoland, a ring of bars and food stalls under tents in the center of the community. We passed a ramshackle rainbow-colored house that had two handwritten signs posted. The first read ''Vaelt Regeringen" which Trine said ''basically means 'get rid of government.' " The second read, ''Kone Sogen," or ''Seeking Wife."
The farther we got from Pusher Street and out onto Christiania's thin peninsula, the more the homes along sylvan dirt paths seemed something out of a fairy tale. There were lots of rainbows and signs that read things like, ''The fantasy lives."
At a restaurant called Morgenstedet, we ate excellent bowls of spicy soup and lentil salads and Trine ran into an old glassy-eyed friend called ''Beautiful Kasper." She introduced me as a journalist and Kasper asked -- seriously --"Oh, do you write for High Times?"
As we left Christiania, we read this message posted on the wooden gateway: ''You are now entering the EU."
. . .
The next morning, Trine wanted to show me the rest of Copenhagen. But first, she fixed us a traditional Danish breakfast, with a soft-boiled egg in a little cup and the most wonderful pastries and loaves of bread from the local bakery. This is when I found out that what we know here as a ''danish" pastry is actually called ''wienerbrod" (after Vienna, strangely enough). The layers of buttery, flaky pastry, however, put to shame what we get at home.
After breakfast, we wandered through the historic cemetery, Assistens Kirkegaard, where famous Danes such as Hans Christian Andersen, Soren Kierkegaard, and Niels Bohr are buried. Assistens Kirkegaard is a pretty lively place -- it's used by locals as a park, with plenty of people sunbathing and picnicking on a nice day.
By mid-morning, we made our way to the Carlsberg Brewery's Visitors Center. There's a short, free self-guided tour that ends up at Bar Carlsberg for a few free samples. We -- and everyone else it seemed -- tried to wander slowly through the modest displays trying to appear polite and not too eager. But , we were here for the beer. So were a number of locals, who were reading their morning newspapers while quaffing their daily freebies.
Feeling so warm and fuzzy from our morning, we decided to be a little touristy and take one of the canal boat tours that leave from Nyhavan, the colorful, maritime street seen in nearly every photo evocation of Copenhagen. Nyhavan once was a rough-and-tumble fisherman's district, but now you're more likely to see drunken tourists at the outdoor tables. (A word to the wise, that other well-documented Copenhagen maritime landmark, The Little Mermaid statue, was recently toppled off her perch by vandals with explosives.)
Our canal boat tour was very low key. The first mate, a pretty blonde, didn't seem to care that passengers carried their own bottles of beer aboard. The captain even let a little boy steer us through one stretch of canal lined with houseboats. There was no guide, and our ticket allowed us to hop on and off at various stops, such as one near Amalienborg Palace, home of the Danish royal family, where we watched the changing of the guard. Trine and I twice got yelled at by the furry-hatted guards for getting too close to the action.
By evening, we were in such a giddy mood that I let her talk me into going to Tivoli. I have to admit a basic bias against amusement parks. But now that I've been to Tivoli, I realize that to miss it is to miss a definitive Danish experience. How many capital cities, after all, can boast of a 20-acre amusement park smack dab in the middle of town?
Founded in 1843, a full century before Disneyland, the place retains its old-fashioned flair. The wooden roller-coaster is still driven manually by brakemen. In the middle of the park, two tightrope walkers in bright green outfits put on a show. Trine dragged me to rides that she remembered from childhood, such as a crazy, scary funhouse called Valhalla based on Norse mythology. My favorite was steering little replica Chinese junks around a man-made pond. And then, as darkness fell, something . . . well, at the risk of sounding hokey, I'll just say it: Something dreamy and magical happened when Tivoli's thousands of colored lights came on.
For dinner, Trine brought me to Groften, a huge restaurant dating to 1874 that serves traditional Danish food. We ordered various ''smorrebrod" off a menu with over 40 choices. Smorrebrod is often translated as ''open-faced sandwich," but that really doesn't do it justice. My favorites: potatoes and sherry-marinated herring, with creme fraiche and red onion on rye; old Danish cheese on rye; tiny fresh peeled shrimp on white bread. We drank the traditional accompaniment of beer and a sampling of aquavit. ''Skal!" toasted Trine, and we giggled like naughty children over our fun day.
After dinner, the park was beginning to thin out. We lingered for a while under the soft glow of the lighted paths.
''That was a pretty hygge time, huh?"
''Yes," she said, ''I think you're catching on."
Jason Wilson, series editor of ''The Best American Travel Writing," lives in Philadelphia.
