Not many of us are looking forward to the coming winter with relish. Uncertainty reigns as the nights draw in and the weather cools. We’re going to need to find ways to cope, and learn how best to hunker in our bunkers, mustering all the scented candles, logs on grates and patience we can.
How else can we make this imminent incarceration more bearable? One idea could be to turn to those untranslatable mantras and magic “loanwords” that fill contemporary bookstore shelves.
We already know about “hygge”, the Danish import that means the pleasure of convivial cosiness and which in 2016 spawned a micro-industry of how-to literature.
We could ladle on a bit of “lagom”, the Swedish word for moderation – useful in a time of un-plenty – and draw from the deep well of “gezelligheid”, the Dutch word for convivial cosiness (think twinkly Amsterdam brown cafés) and “gemütlichkeit”, the German variant, conjuring candles, cakes, doilies and heart shapes cut into folksy shutters.
Several harsh-wintered northern European countries have such expressions – “koselig” being the Norwegian variant, again a semi-mystical composite of cosiness and intimacy.
Niksen, the art of doing nothing
Then, to cap those winter lockdown plans, we could cultivate a dose of “niksen”, the Dutch art of doing nothing.
“We love these new words that express feelings we would otherwise struggle to articulate,” says Olga Mecking, author of the new book Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing.
Niksen is something that the Dutch say on a daily basis and it’s very useful in lockdown, as it’s about relinquishing the struggle of dealing with time. Niksen is about letting go of endless quantification and acquisition, and just accepting that you want to do nothing.”
Niksen could mean playing Lego, doing colouring-in books and listening aimlessly to music, she adds. It’s nothingness and purposelessness, but not in a heavy Jean-Paul Sartre sort of way.
“Niksen is Dutch shorthand for ‘I want to do nothing with no purpose’,” says Mecking, herself Polish. “As the Dutch say, ‘niksen is niks’ – that is, ‘doing nothing is nothing’. And if it’s really good, they say ‘lekker niksen’ (roughly, doing nothing deliciously).”
Words for winter
It’s an art and as Mecking admits, “Many people find it difficult.” Niksen is easier said than not done. But if you get it, it could be a great winter soul survival tip. “Cultivate a ‘niksen’ attitude and everything will be fine.”
Such words give life what linguistics expert Professor Vyvyan Evans calls “social meaning”. “Words like niksen and hygge don’t exist in a vacuum,” he says. “The latter, for example, is a word that reflects the common physical experience associated with the long, cold, darkest season in Denmark.”
Such words are compelling, adds Evans, because they describe a shared emotional experience – and they help us cope with adversity. For example, from November onwards, much of Norway settles down for a winter of a ferocity that would hole the UK. How do Norwegians hack it?
Curiously well, according to a 2012 study in the BMC Psychiatry journal. Studying the arctic city of Tromso, psychologist Kari Leibowitz of Stanford University found that Norwegians developed resilience and even greater happiness from dealing with a long winter – helped, obviously, by heaps of koselig (another cosy term).
Coming in from the cold
In this respect bad weather outside can be a boon in winter. Our impulse to hygge – and perchance to niksen – is driven by the delightful dialogue between internal cosiness and a blustery exterior.
In Gaston Bachelard’s 1958 masterpiece The Poetics of Space he notes that “dreamers like a severe winter… a reminder of winter strengthens the happiness of inhabiting”.
And in the essay In Praise of Shadows, Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki wrote that “without the red glow of the coals, the whole mood of winter is lost and with it the pleasure of family gatherings round the fire.”
More fuel for a lockdown winter comes from those words that denote a bittersweet longing for home; and here the Romanian word “dor” and the Welsh word “hiraeth” express such a yearning.
Japan, a source for many useful words – “ganbatte”, for example means “give it your best shot in the face of adversity” – gives us “ikigai”, which according to Hector Garcia, co-author of Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, is a return to “the central core of meaningfulness in life”. Such as sitting round a fire in winter, doing sod all with your family.
Borrowed words
British words like “cosy” and “homely” seem inadequate in comparison. But as Evans says, we have our own untranslatables. “Take ‘Dickensian’,” he says. “It means both urban poverty but also carols and picturesque snow on cobbles.”
That said, so eager are we to find our own versions of hygge that there’s been a degree of interpretative licence. In 2017, VisitScotland purloined the Gaelic word “cosagach” to use as a Scottish version of hygge. “It backfired as it actually meant a small hole where woodlice live,” says Evans.
Whatever the wordspells we cast, this winter we’ll need all the hygge, niksen and cosagach we can get to survive and help us through to spring. And here Mecking draws from a favourite idiom, this time from her native Polish: Jakoś to będzie, or “things will work out in the end”. They must.
This article has been updated to correct the spellings of gemütlichkeit and hiraeth.
Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing by Olga Mecking (Piatkus, £12.99) is out now
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