With its combination of community, cooperation and selflessness, this could offer some small comfort in a terrifying eraA new hygge has dropped, but you’ll need to take off your cosy slippers and put down your cinnamon bun to try it. There is a real danger of getting the wrong end of the stick whe n we get enthusiastic about other nations’ lifestyles – such as when the New York Times writes about modern Britons enjoying boiled mutton for lunch, or “cavorting” in swamps, and we all get cross – but this comes straight from the Viking’s mouth.That’s Meik Wiking, the perfectly named chief executive of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. Writing in Stylist, Wiking suggests we consider adopting a Norwegian concept that requires no blankets or candles: dugnadsånd, approximately translated as “community spirit”. He likens dugnadsånd to barn-raising in 18th- and 19th-century North America, describing a “collective willingness of people to come together in the context of community projects – emphasising cooperation and selflessness”. Continue reading... ...read more read less