Translating Hygge: a Danish design myth and its Anglophone appropriation

Hygge, the lifestyling trend that offers a path to ‘authentic’ Danish contentment, is one of the more curious instances of cultural translation in recent years, both semantically and in terms of how an everyday Danish concept has been transformed by London publishing houses into a marketable commodity. Despite the widespread international popular success of the phenomenon, hygge has received little academic attention. What is particularly lacking is an analysis of the cultural transferral of the concept, of the rather different set of meanings constructed by the remodelling of hygge by English-speaking commentators. This paper proposes that design history can offer a helpful framework for this kind of understanding. By approaching the case of hygge as a ‘mythology’ in the Barthian sense, we will argue that the concept builds upon the legacy of the mythologies imprinted on Anglophone societies by the branding of Scandinavian Design since the 1950s. Highlighting the links between such myths and the manufactured British version of hygge, we will posit that the meaning of hygge – the way it operates as a sign in British culture today – is dependent upon longstanding structures of understanding.