Tønder, Ribe, Flump and Hygge

Five days of travelling on the trot and suffering from the accumulated effects of M25 traffic, P&O sandwiches, French retail frenzy, Belgian potholes and German kontaktlose Karte Technologies... we arrived in Denmark in an odd state of mind, a mix of feeling frazzled but in a slump. Is there a word for it? A 'flump' maybe...

Denmark!

So, mid-afternoon on a Sunday the two of us, feeling distinctly flumpish, presented ourselves at the reception desk of Camping Tønder having just abandoned the moho on a nearby verge; it was unclear where to check-in. On foot it was obvious, once we realised the campsite was part of a big municipal sports complex and youth hostel. One front office served the lot. It was all very relaxed, the young man behind the desk in no hurry - no he didn't need our passports, was happy to give our Acsi cards a cursorry glance, explaining he was off home now but there it was no problem to checking-in tomorrow.

Welcome to Denmark, everyone said it was a laid back, friendly place, warm and trusting of strangers. So it seemed on first sight, and as I am writing this now, four days later, every experience to date has reinforced that impression. The only other country that we have visited equally inhabited by kind hearted humans is New Zealand. It's lovely to be here, but it does make you wonder how we British have managed to embrace the curmudgeonly as one of our defining national characteristics.

The site in Tønder was in a nice wooded area but during the day it hardly peaceful. The adjacent recreation ground is in constant use by sports clubs at the weekend and schools on weekdays. It's a happy hubbub though. The facilities on site are well designed, if a tad 'municipal. Given the current 'nordic blast' the fact that the shower block was centrally heated to levels commensurate with Danish notions of 'hygge', proved a minor blessing.

As soon as we arrived we walked into town which was less than ten minutes away on foot. It is a very attractive place, a tangle of old streets with tall gabled cottages mixed with more monumental townhouses, all gathered around a small central square overlooked by a handsome white church with a slender steeple.

Late on a Sunday the place was almost entirely deserted, quiet as an abandoned film set. Next morning it had come to life. Even the posh shops put their wares outside giving the main thoroughfare a street market atmosphere. We had a good mooch, admiring particularly places selling kitchen and household goods - Danish design giving us some good ideas for the finishing touches to our house refurbishment project scheduled for next autumn.

On the main street there were all kinds of shops, restaurants and bars, but few places to buy groceries. As in many places food shops have migrated to the outskirts where parking is easier. We did find one craft bakery in the centre, which was fortuitous as we needed bread for lunch. We took the opportunity to buy a couple of Danish pastries too.

Our guidebook mentioned that one of Denmark's prettiest villages was only 5km. to the west of us, and as you would expect there was a well surfaced cycle track all the way there. Møgeltønder is one of those 'model villages' built by the local aristocrat for the betterment of the estate peasantry. Like many such places it was big on visual appeal but a tad soul-less.

The thatched brick built houses stretched down the straight main street in a somewhat uniform manner. The gigantic church also seemed out of scale with the place as if the titled chap in the big house had designs on improving his worker's moral probity as well as their material betterment. In other words it was conditional charity on offer.

As with many such places the village itself is situated within beautiful parkland, the big house itself hidden behind high walls and tall specimen trees. Our guidebook mentioned there was limited access to the grounds and gardens on some afternoons, a small gaggle of tourists had gathered awaiting the opening time at 2pm.

After we got back to the van I read a bit about the place on-line. In the early nineteenth century ownership of the estate passed from the aristocratic family who built the village to the Danish crown. Apparently Crown Prince somebody-or-other lives in it these days, the youngest son of Queen Marguerite II of Denmark.

 As we cycled back across a landscape of big fields, some bright yellow with flowering rape, others fallow but neatly ploughed, with big clouds floating above and a church steeple or two poking above the clumps of trees on the horizon, it struck me how familiar this all looked. There is an undoubted family resemblance between this part of Denmark and the scenery and settlements of East Anglia. You sense that Hoskins would have found southern Jutland pleasing and Constable could have happily have painted it.

Next day we headed 50kms north to Ribe. It features in most lists of 'must see' places in Denmark, partly because, like Tønder, it is an appealing old town, but also because it has a significant place in the country's history as the the location of its earliest church, built by missionaries from Frankish kingdoms to the south early in the ninth century.

The big cathedral that now dominates the town square was constructed between the late twelfth and early fifteenth century and in terms of style is similar to those we saw in North Rhineland towns.

I took a liking to the bronze door handles and relief sculpture panels next to them. They had a vernacular energy about them reminiscent of folk art.

So far as the place itself goes with its riverside setting and twisting old streets it is a pleasant place to wander around. It clearly is a touristy town, but it is not dominated or overwhelmed by its popularity.

Rather than visit the museum we decided to cycle out to the site of Ribe's old castle. Only the mound it once sat on remains, but you get the sense of the place's once strategic position from the top and a nice prospect of the town and its big church.

A statue to the thirteenth century Queen Dagmar was erected on the spot in 1911. The scene of the queen's death on the base is gloriously melodramatic, like a scene from a late Romantic opera.

We enjoyed our two days in Ribe, the experience enhanced by the fact that the campsite is probably the most comfortable and well appointed one we have ever stayed on. Which brings me to the question, what is 'hygge'? A difficult to define Danish word that gets mentioned every time the country tops the charts in surveys to find the world's happiest country. 'cosiness' or 'togetherness' are sometimes suggested as equivalents in English, but that is to simplify the concept. As Gill observed, "It's not just about wearing matching lopi patterned knitted socks."

So thinking about Ribe Camping as the epitome of hygge, it was undoubtedly a very cosy place, from the warmth of the centrally heated showers, to the communal covered BBQ area with candles on each of the tables and fairy lights dangling from the rafters, the small animal area with goats and chickens to entertain children, all of it designed to create a sense of belonging and comfort.

It is all to easy to dismiss this as a predilection for the sentimental, but that's not the way hygge works, it's a more intrinsic quality built into the way Danes think; it is why their design is so appealing, not because it is more beautiful, but because it is a pleasure to use. 

You don't need to go to a design museum to experience it, somewhere as mundane as the campsite bristled with good design. The showers were as good as any you would find in a boutique hotel. If the phrase 'camp kitchen' conjours-up a vision of an ancient grease encrusted gas stove suitable only for re-heating a tin of Heinz sausages and beans or a Pot Noodle, this is not what Camping Ribe had in mind. The big square airy room was divided in two. One half, the kitchen, consisted of two rows of contemporary styled domino gas hobs set into stainless steel tops, each with a black quartz slab beside it for food preparation. On the wall next to the them was a bank of nine top notch fan ovens. The only thing I used were the deep washing up sinks each with a cool minimalist steel tube tap. Everything worked and was squeaky clean, it was simply assumed that you would leave it the way you would wish to find it.

If the cooking area was a bit 'Masterchef' then the communal dining area was 'upscale IKEA', the same canteen layout, but not quite so utilitarian; more Conran old school than nouveau Formica. It was well used. Clearly cooking together as a social occasion is part of the Danish camping experience.

The first time I used the washing-up area an extended family had just finished their meal. They had settled down to watch the end of some Danish reality T.V. show on the big H.D. screen on the wall. It's USP was quite different to a British show such as Love Island or Towie where the entertainment lies in watching people bitch about each other, have a row, or weeping quietly into the hidden camera; the point of the Danish show, so far as I could tell, seemed to be the opposite, people resolving differences with lots of big group hugs on a comfy sofa at the end as the credits rolled.

So, back to the original question, what is 'hygge'? Well so far as I can tell on first acquaintance it's all about finding happiness in small pleasures, both individually and collectively. Because it's a national trait, Danish culture itself is wired so it can flourish. Of all the places we've travelled, in terms of the mundane details of everyday existence, Denmark does seem unusually calm, collected and quite jolly. This is quite difficult to deal with if you are British and expect to be irritated with life and rarely make it through the day without at least one Basil Fawlty style rant. Let's be honest, we don't really enjoy contentment, it's not really a British thing