In 2016, I attended a conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. There, I was struck by the sheer beauty of, well everything. The people, dogs, flats, fashion, and especially the food, are some of the most objectively lovely I’ve seen nearly anywhere. In addition to the exquisite nature of everyday things in this nation, its widely documented that Danes are some of the happiest people in the world, ranking as the third highest nation according to the World Happiness Report 2018 commissioned by the United Nations (UN). The people of Denmark are also healthier than Americans on average - seeing a two-percent higher increase in Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy (HALE) between 2000 and 2015 than the United States. While there are multiple contributing factors to Denmark’s positive health outcomes, unsurprisingly, reduced levels of stress and greater social supports would appear to contribute to a happier and healthier society. This paper explores the relationship between Danish design and dimensions of health and happiness within the national and regional culture as compared to the United States.
Denmark is the southernmost Nordic country located in Northern Europe, situated between neighboring Sweden, Germany, and Norway. The Kingdom of Denmark is made up of the Jutland peninsula and an archipelago of more than 400 islands, with a population of more than 5.7 million people, and a total land mass about the size of the US state of Rhode Island. Denmark is part of Scandinavia, a region with shared cultural, historical, and linguistic ties, which also includes Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. Denmark’s global positioning at 56° latitude makes for long days in the summer and short days in the cold of winter. Rather than wither under these conditions, Danes appear to work with their environmental extremes resplendently.
For example, the capital city of Copenhagen is notably home to Noma, voted best restaurant in the world four times over. Noma is known not only for its philosophy of gastronomic geography-based cuisine, but for reinventing the modern tasting menu to focus on what can be sourced seasonally. In an interview with Wired, Noma’s founder, Danish chef René Redzepi described winter as, “the time when fish are abundant. The flesh is the most firm that you can imagine, their bellies are full of roe and all the other innards are pristine...It's also the moment when all of the shellfish is at its best - bucketloads of urchins, oysters, weird clams, weird penis-looking shells...Why aren't we then - at that period - a fish restaurant? Why don't we just cook what's there?" Noma, and the Noma-inspired cuisine that dominates Copenhagen’s food scene, represent just one example of the naturally-inspired elements of Scandinavian design.
Locals have historically responded to the harsh winters and intense landscapes in the Nordic region by making the most of available resources to infuse into their industrial, yet inviting approach to design. One description highlights the ‘psychological warmth’ that comes from the cultural traditions that combat the conditions: “That warmth might be expressed in colour, pattern, and texture or in organic form, but there is always a human quality to Scandinavian design.” Hygge (pronounced 'hoo-gah') is the Danish word for this idea of psychological warmth, or general quality of taking pleasure in coziness and and overall ambiance to support well-being. This could be in the form of comforting food and drink, soft woolen textiles, and an emphasis on atmosphere where attributes like lighting put you at ease. Meik Wiking is CEO of the Happiness Research Institute (HRI), an independent think tank conducting research to inform public policy decisions and address inequality gaps in subjective well-being, and also the author of “The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living.” Wiking claims that the focus on these details means that Danes burn the most candle wax of any other country in Europe. The warmth and brightness of the candlelit flame in contrast to the cold dark of winter is said to be one of the fundamental examples of hygge.
Are Danes happier because of these conscious or unconscious historical design traditions? Or, is the global appeal of Danish design a result of conveying their happiness through design for delight?
In his Ted talk on “Three Ways Good Design Makes you Happy,” Don Norman argues that “pleasant things work better.” Norman goes on to describe the importance beauty, function, and balance play in the usability and understanding of a product—and the ways in which our brain is biased towards the connection between design and emotion. Bright colors and symmetry then provide a visceral experience for our subconscious. And the result is that we consciously feel more in control and overall more positive about our user experience. Perhaps the cultural traditions of the Nordic region intuitively evolved to apply these principles to their way of life in such a commonplace fashion, its like noticing your instinct to breathe.
Denmark’s social democracy and general political and civic culture of trust and inclusivity have contributed to a convention that the “role of design is to improve life for everyone.” Again focusing on well-made, understated items, rather than flashy consumerism or a desire to compare oneself to others. Indeed, HRI’s Wiking believes that the fact that three out of four Danes would agree with the statement, “Yes, you can trust most strangers.” (while the global average is one in four), is directly related to the overall happiness of the Danish people.
The Gross National Product (GDP) per capita of Denmark is slightly lower than that of the United States, which The New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman attributes to the fact that Danes take more vacations. Otherwise, the employment rate of adults is markedly higher in Denmark. This fact allied with the dominant role of unions mean Danes earn a higher living wage on average than Americans.
Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Employment Rate: Aged 15-64: All Persons for the United States, retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM64TTUSA156S, December 14, 2018.
While Denmark clearly fairs well on these typical measures of a country’s economic success, HRI and other global bodies are advocating that rather than comparing GNP, we should be pursuing Gross National Happiness (GNH). Jeff Sachs is a professor at Columbia University and a co-editor of the United Nations annual World Happiness Report. Sachs raises the paradox evident in the US, where even as income rises, happiness does not (despite a prominent and profitable self-help industry). He champions GNH in saying, “Let’s get serious about the quality of our lives, and stop this nonsense of chasing such a poor indicator that is taking us actually farther away from our happiness.” The dimensions of happiness that are most important, Sachs suggests, are: our physical and mental health, social support, and honesty in government.
According to other indicators of cultural dimensions, such as Hofstede and the World Values Survey, the US and Denmark are largely identical in many ways (see country comparison below). In Hofstede’s analysis of what he controversially calls ‘Masculinity/Femininity,’ describes a nation's value system for measures of success indicated more by achievement or nurture. In this dimension, Denmark’s score of 16 would indicate a more Feminine society, with a greater focus on work/life balance, quality of life, and bias towards consensus building. This would seem to align with Denmark’s famously generous family leave policies, typically with 52 weeks that can be split between both parents, as well as a general lack of stigma attached to adapting work schedules to attend your children.
The World Values Survey (WVS) looks more closely at people's’ values and beliefs and how they manifest in societal and political issues. Denmark was not one of the countries included in the WVS, but neighboring Sweden did respond with slightly higher confidence to questions evaluating ‘Satisfaction of Life’ compared to those surveyed in the US:
WVS Question:
All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days? Using this card on which 1 means you are “completely dissatisfied” and 10 means you are “completely satisfied” where would you put your satisfaction with your life as a whole?
In the 1970s, the country of Bhutan initially set up systems to measure Gross National Happiness and advocated that GNH be evaluated as a cost-benefit ratio comparable to GDP. Since then, the World Happiness Report 2016 would come to agree that well-being inequality has a stronger negative impact on how we feel about our lives than income inequality. In International happiness research, there are three dimensions used to evaluate subjective well-being, the below represents HRI’s approach to defining the cognitive (or life evaluation), the affective, and the eudaimonic dimensions:
Source: Happiness Research Institute
When interviewed about his writings on Denmark for his book, “The Blue Zones of Happiness: Lessons from the World's Happiest People,” Dan Buettner, emphasized, “When it comes to happiness, I think we often think of it as the attainment of joy, but actually, the bigger part of happiness is getting rid of the stresses of our daily lives. So, this notion of having your health insurance covered, your education covered, and your retirement covered is actually very huge.” It's true, Danes have access to universal healthcare but the model is weighted predominantly on preventive and catastrophic care. Even so, their life expectancy is higher, they have far lower rates of obesity (attributed to better diet and more active lifestyle), and our opioid epidemic virtually doesn’t exist in the region (Public Health Advocate).
Conversely, the most recent World Happiness Report released in 2018 focuses an entire chapter on “America’s Health Crisis and the Easterlin Paradox.” The Easterlin Paradox refers to the inverse relationship between increasing incomes per capita over time, while measures of subjective well-being have remained the same. The authors highlight five major variables other than per capita income that contribute to a country’s reported happiness levels:
Population health (measured by health-adjusted life expectancy, HALE);
Strength of social support networks;
Personal freedom (measured by the perceived freedom of individuals to make key life decisions);
Social trust (measured by the public’s perception of corruption in government and business); and
Generosity.
Not only have several of these determinants of well-being been in decline in the US in recent years, in particular, the authors describe the public health crises seen in the slower growth in HALE in the United States compared to other wealthy countries, as well as the serious epidemics—obesity, substance abuse, and depression—the country is facing. Of these, they cite research to support mental health as “single largest determinant of well-being” (see Figure 7.9).
“The simple fact is that there is far more misery in America than there needs to be. Every other advanced country has universal health care and a much stronger social safety net than we do.”
Obviously, the United States and Denmark are not perfect foil examples of one another. Denmark’s population of almost 6 million pales in comparison to 329 million people living in the US. The inherent homogeneity of Denmark and the Nordic region allow for the feasibility and success of its social welfare programs. Though, Columbia University’s Sachs suggests, “I believe that social, linguistic, ethnic, religious homogeneity probably is conducive to the social democratic model, but I don’t believe that diversity is a barrier to it.”
Furthermore, in a recent report In the Shadow of Happiness, the HRI acknowledges a more nuanced picture of “the Happy Nordic Region.” They analysed those who self-report struggling or suffering and outline recommendations to reduce unhappiness, which again point to general health and mental health as topmost important circumstances associated with happiness and unhappiness.
This brings us back to the idea of hygge, which individuals such as author Helen Russell are working to have added to the UNESCO World Heritage Intangibles List. In her book “A Year of Living Danishly” she likened the practice of hygge to self-kindness, which contributes to happiness through the effect it has on you and everyone around you. In addition to this cultural standard of practice, due to the lack of emphasis on the rat race or focus on competitive consumerism, Danes also have more time to spend pursuing their interests. Going back to Dan Buettner, “you have a country here where people are good at architecture and they create the best restaurants in the world and furniture design. And these are jobs suggestive of flow — of optimal using [of] your talents, so that time can absolutely disappear.” Not only that, Denmark is inherently human-centered, with its largest city, Copenhagen said to be built first for people, and second for bicycles.
We may have a ways to go to design everything in the United States so that it is not only useful, but also beautiful. But we can ‘do as the Danes do’ by working with our home environment to maintain simplicity, bring inspiration from nature, cultivate coziness, and focus on our physical and mental well-being to potentially improve individual happiness. Elevating the resounding research on GDH and dimensions of happiness could help influence public policy investments to move the needle on determinants of well-being gaps and inequalities. Namely, working towards free or subsidized college education, access to affordable healthcare, particularly mental health, and progressive parental leave and cultural practices that support families and social frameworks.