It's time to embrace Dugnadsnd - the Norwegian concept we all need right now -- Emma Beddington

[erronis]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/23/its-time-to-embrace-dugnadsand-the-norwegian-concept-we-all-need-right-now

With its combination of community, cooperation and selflessness, this could offer some small comfort in a terrifying era

A new hygge has dropped, but you’ll need to take off your cosy slippers and put down your cinnamon bun to try it. There is a real danger of getting the wrong end of the stick when we get enthusiastic about other nations’ lifestyles – such as when the New York Times writes about modern Britons enjoying boiled mutton for lunch, or “cavorting” in swamps, and we all get cross – but this comes straight from the Viking’s mouth.

That’s Meik Wiking, the perfectly named chief executive of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. Writing in Stylist, Wiking suggests we consider adopting a Norwegian concept that requires no blankets or candles: dugnadsånd, approximately translated as “community spirit”. He likens dugnadsånd to barn-raising in 18th- and 19th-century North America, describing a “collective willingness of people to come together in the context of community projects – emphasising cooperation and selflessness”.

Could it catch on here? In a way, it already has. There aren’t many barns that need raising in 2025, but our communities definitely need and rely on collective action. With bare-bones budgets, threadbare public services and cuts, cuts, cuts, community spirit is already at least partly responsible for ensuring hungry children are fed, effluent discharged into our waterways is highlighted (why is this a thing?) and refugees are welcomed, among other things.

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