Survive? It's Just Winter...
December 13, 2025
"Surviving the winter in Denmark" I came across this phrase recently. And to be honest, it irritated me.
What does it mean, to survive the winter? As if Denmark were a hostile place that you can only get through with special equipment and iron discipline.
Yet a quick glance at the map is enough to recognize how absurd that is.
Flensburg lies directly on the Danish border. Tønder just a few kilometers beyond it. Does anyone seriously believe the weather changes abruptly there? Do people in Flensburg live differently, get through winter differently than their neighbors in southern Denmark?
And if we're going to compare: How big are the differences really—between Flensburg and Munich, for instance? There we're talking about completely different climate conditions, and yet no one talks about having to "survive" the Bavarian winter.
Even when it comes to darkness, it's worth taking a closer look.
In the last week of December, around the longest night, and in the week after, it's dark here in the far north of Denmark for just about an hour and twenty minutes longer than it is in Heidelberg in Baden-Württemberg, for example. That's all.
But the weather here is significantly milder. I don't have that heavy, damp air in winter that practically takes my breath away. Not that constant feeling that everything is clammy... clothing, walls, thoughts... I know that much more intensely from other parts of Germany.
Phrases like "surviving the winter" live on exaggeration and dramatization. They create images that have little to do with reality. The Danish winter is gray, often windy, sometimes wet—that's true. But it's not an extreme condition. It's everyday life. For millions of people. Incidentally, all across Europe...
The light conditions are also often invoked in this context.
Getting up in the dark in the morning, leaving the office in the dark in the evening... as if that were something uniquely Danish... But it's not just Germans who've moved here who experience that—it's people in very many regions of Germany and all over the world once winter comes. The vitamin D topic is often presented as if it were a Nordic emergency measure. But in Germany, it's long since completely normal to take vitamin D in winter—as a tablet, capsule, or drops.
And yes, many people there also know what's called the winter blues. I come from Rhineland-Palatinate. And it exists there too. These tablets don't completely solve the problem—they don't do that here any more than they do there.
But here's what's interesting: Here, in the far north of Denmark, I honestly don't have time to indulge in a case of the winter blues! Not because it's brighter. But because there's constantly something going on.
So much happens together that once you've integrated, you can hardly find room to withdraw and sink into dark thoughts. Almost sometimes it's even a bit too much. Women's coffee circles, knitting clubs, choirs, handball, Zumba, winter swimming, and always new opportunities to meet people, experience community, do things together. I experience this form of community here much more intensely than I knew it from Germany.
And what's remarkable is: if you don't show up sometime, it doesn't go unnoticed. Then someone asks. Whether everything is okay. That's not romanticization.
It's lived everyday life.
And perhaps that also explains another word that's used so prolifically in connection with Denmark: hygge.
Everywhere, people talk about "making it hygge," everything has to "look hygge." Candles, blankets, colors, home décor trends—as if well-being could be decorated. But that misses the point entirely. Here in Denmark, we hygge ourselves. We make ourselves comfortable so that we feel good, so that we feel at ease. That has little to do with trends and nothing at all with magazines. It's not a style, but an attitude. And above all: something shared.
Maybe that's exactly where the great misunderstanding lies. People try to squeeze life realities into catchphrases. Winter becomes a test, hygge becomes a backdrop. Both become smaller and more false than they really are.
Because you don't have to survive the Danish winter, and you don't need instructions to feel good.
You simply live. Even in winter.
