What can we learn about wintering from the coldest, happiest countries in the world?
If you’ve been here for a while, then you may be starting to gather that I have something of a obsession fascination with the seasons. Cue music, “Seasons” by Future Islands. It’s now becoming an annual theme (last year’s essay is here) in which I try to convince you that winter isn’t as bad as spring’s PR agency makes it out to be. And I admit that this is very much related to my gravitation toward living more ritualistically, which I wrote about in my last essay. But it’s not just the seasons that I’m so fascinated by. Rather, it’s one particular season—winter.
I recently rewatched Hector and the Search for Happiness, and there’s this beautiful scene, shortly after Hector has arrived to a Tibetan monastery, when he’s on the rooftop talking to a monk. He tells the monk that searching for happiness is one thing, but making it the goal just doesn’t seem to work. The monk, pointing to the sky, immediately responds, “Higher than that, Hector.” The monk continues, “More important than what we’re searching for is what we’re avoiding.” Moments later we see one of Hector’s journal entries flash across the screen, “Avoiding unhappiness…is not the road to happiness.”
I feel like this sentiment describes how I approached winter, and more broadly, how I approached life, for many years as an adult. The fact that tears welled up as I began to write that out reinforces this. Winter was something to be spurned, avoided, and kept at arm’s length. And I went to great lengths to avoid it, evidenced by spending past winters in places like Mexico and Costa Rica, and living many years in Southern California. Most of these places don’t exactly have four seasons; it’s rainy season and dry season.
It would seem that many people have something of an avoidant relationship with winter, as evidenced by the title of this article from The Atlantic, “Why so Many People Hate Winter.” We see winter coming weeks, if not months, before it arrives, and it’s like we just want to Gandalf it—you shall not pass winter. We see it from miles away and have weeks to prepare, yet culturally it doesn’t seem to change the largely unfavorable sentiment and experience of winter. This seems to be reflected in everything from day-to-day conversations about winter to how meteorologists talk about winter weather to pop culture. Don’t tell me you’ve never dropped a “Winter is coming” meme or GIF? Believe me, I’m as guilty as anyone.
A lot of the research doesn’t exactly paint winter in a positive light. A study of 1,500 Canadians found that winter was their least favorite season, with only 5% choosing it as their preferred season, while a HuffPost/YouGov survey in January of 2019 found that nearly half of respondents would prefer to skip winter altogether. Then there’s this recent CBS News story that reported that some people are literally allergic to winter. Needless to say, winter needs a new PR person.
“Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
But it’s not so much the season of winter that I’m so fascinated by, but rather, the link between winter (and wintery destinations) and well-being. Because frankly a lot of my past assumptions, and the assumptions of many other people, have been challenged by science. I don’t want to discount things like Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which I swear I had my first winter living in the Pacific Northwest. Winter is hard for many people. Yet a lot of research in recent years flies in the face of what many of us have come to believe about winter.
More than a decade ago, in 2012, the UN came out with their first World Happiness Report. It was just a few years prior, in 2008, when The Geography of Bliss came out, in which its author, NPR correspondent Eric Weiner, traveled the world in search of the happiest countries. I was obsessed with wanting to know what the happiest countries were, why they were the happiest, and how I could live there. So it was fitting that just after devouring Weiner’s book, I was introduced to the World Happiness Report.
I thought that because I had such a positive temperament, traveled abroad, wrote about the world, and had lived in seemingly happy places, that I knew something about happiness. I thought that maybe France or Italy may be up there among the happiest countries in the world. How could they not be considering how much they love some of the better, finer things in life like wine, cheese, chocolate, and romance. Or perhaps a tropical country like Costa Rica, where I’d recently lived for a winter, and was all about their “pura vida” (pure life) vibe. As it turns out, none of those things, nor being a privileged white person from America, made me qualified to know much about happiness.
The happiest countries were none of those places. In that first report, the happiest countries in the world were all in Northern Europe. I was flummoxed. A number of these countries contained land within the Arctic Circle. I didn’t understand how places that were so dark and wintery could be so happy. It must have been an anomaly, naturally. That was the only obvious explanation. And so I was chomping at the bit a year later when the UN released their second World Happiness Report. I was convinced that it would confirm my assumptions.
It did not. The second annual World Happiness Report was much of the same, albeit Switzerland came in at no. 3 (it had to be the chocolate and cheese I thought). And Canada was no. 6! WTF.
And it’s largely continued year after year that the majority of the happiest countries in the world are in Northern Europe. Finland is the happiest country in the world for seven years running. And guess what part of the world The Happiness Research Institute is located in? If you guessed Northern Europe, and more specifically Denmark (previously ranked no. 1), then you’re absolutely correct.
“In our relentlessly busy contemporary world, we are forever trying to defer the onset of winter. We don’t ever dare to feel its full bite, and we don’t dare to show the way that it ravages us. An occasional sharp wintering would do us good. We must stop believing that these times in our lives are somehow silly, a failure of nerve, a lack of willpower. We must stop trying to ignore them or dispose of them. They are real, and they are asking something of us. We must learn to invite the winter in. We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Perhaps it’s my Western ignorance, my innocence, a bad education, or my hubris, but I’d long associated things like cold, darkness, and winter with depression, sadness, unhappiness, and a whole host of other feelings that aren’t exactly on the bright and fun side of the Feelings Wheel (yes, there’s a Feelings Wheel).
To an extent, at least in America, that’s not completely inaccurate. Alaska historically has the highest suicide rates in America, while some of the highest rates of depression are in northern states and those with long winters, including my current state of Oregon. Meanwhile, Hawaii and California, with short or outright non-existent winters, have some of the lowest rates of depression. But that’s a very oversimplified point of view. So I want to take a minute to talk about Alaska in particular.
Alaska has one of the largest Indigenous populations in America. And Indigenous groups in America, including those in Alaska, have undergone immense trauma from colonization, displacement, racism, and much more. It’s horrendous. It’s no coincidence then that they have disproportionately higher rates of mental health challenges including depression, anxiety disorders, addiction, and suicide.
So I can’t simply ignore or gloss over this, especially as a white, straight, cisgender man of a country that was built on systematic oppression. This is important context, because as the World Economic Forum discusses in this article, “Countries with high levels of income inequality tend to have a larger gap between well-being and happiness.”
As I wrote in my last essay, I’m finding encouragement and hope from the very Indigenous communities that have been so oppressed and affected by mental health challenges. Indigenous communities, including some in Alaska, are returning to their roots and incorporating native traditions and community-led programs to bring healing and change. And it’s working. You can read more about this here and here. I shared it in my last essay, but you can also watch the video below.
Findings from the World Happiness Report
So what gives? What are they doing in Northern Europe, and more specifically Nordic and Scandinavian countries, that make them so damn happy? Let’s talk about some of the common themes.
One of the themes echos the last few paragraphs. And that’s that Nordic and Scandinavian countries tend to have greater equality than most of the world. Many of the happiest countries in the world also rank high for gender equality, according to the World Economic Forum. Guess who’s not ranked in the top 20 happiest countries? America. And guess who’s not ranked in the top 20 in gender equality? America. The math isn’t hard here. Greater gender equality leads to greater happiness and health outcomes.
But as you can imagine, there’s not just one indicator or explanation of why the happiest countries in the world are happy and so consistently happy. It’s nuanced. Yet over the years there have been some trends in the data and research, which the World Happiness Report outlines here in their 2020 report. The report references a number of studies that suggest that one "secret" to Nordic happiness is the welfare state framework, and how there tends to be more happiness in countries with "relatively generous welfare benefits" and where the labor market is "regulated to avoid employee exploitation." Imagine that, that generosity and the avoidance of exploitation would lead to more happiness.
This welfare state framework is loosely tied to another trend that the report points to of institutional, or government, quality. Nordic countries tend to have higher qualities of government. Let’s not get started on the “quality” of government in America.
Other explanations highlighted in the World Happiness Report include equality (which I previously mentioned), the autonomy and freedom to make life choices, trust, and social cohesion. The latter of those, about freedom, trust, and social cohesion, are particularly fascinating as someone who lives in a country called the United States, where trust has been so eroded in recent years. The point made in the report comes in part from a study called Social Capital and Well-Being in Times of Crisis, in which the authors illustrate that cultures and communities with stronger trust and social capital move through times of crisis more effectively and happily.
The 2020 World Happiness Report concludes that there's "no secret sauce specific to Nordic happiness that is unavailable to others." The report suggests a more general recipe, using many of the ingredients I mentioned above, which are often present in other countries near the top of life satisfaction lists, like Switzerland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. (The following CNBC special goes deeper into the World Happiness Report, and includes interviews with one of the World Happiness Report’s editors and the CEO of of The Happiness Research Institute.)
But of my favorite parts of that 2020 World Happiness Report is the dispelling of some of the most notorious myths about Nordic countries—namely the impact of weather and assumptions about depression and suicide rates in Nordic countries. This isn’t to discount the impact of weather, winter, and darkness. Finland, as the report acknowledges, had relatively high suicide rates in the 1970s and 1980s, which have declined significantly. And I’ve already mentioned the high suicide rates of Alaska.
But just how impactful is cold weather and short days when some of the countries with the shortest days and coldest winters are among the happiest countries in the world? In fact one study found that in the Norwegian town of Tromsø, which doesn’t see the sun for two months, there’s no seasonal differences in mental distress. Kari Leibowitz, who recently published the book, How to Winter, has written that seasonal affective disorder is remarkably low in Tromsø. The link between weather and mood is relatively small. So what gives?
Well research and different psychological concepts suggest that mindset has a lot to do with it. A 2020 article in The Guardian highlights a winter mindset study, designed by Leibowitz. It found that participants' mindsets predicted their wellbeing over the winter months. It may be assumed that the higher north you travel in Norway, the less optimistic the winter mindset is, as it gets colder and darker. However, as Leibowitz found, the opposite was true. A positive wintertime mindset was more common in Svalbard (at 78 deg north) than Tromsø (69 deg north). And Tromsø participants had a more positive outlook than Oslo participants (60 deg north). The further north you go, the more optimistic and positive the mindset was.
The power of our mindsets
The fact is that beyond just our wintertime sentiment, our mindsets influence our reality. You may have heard the quote that's often attributed to Plato that changing our reality begins by changing our mind. To illustrate this further, I want to share one of the top TED talks of all time, “How to Make Stress Your Friend,” by health psychologist Kelly McGonigal.
McGonigal cites a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who asked 29,000 people to rate their level of stress over the past year. Those who reported high levels of stress, and who believed stress had a large impact on their health, had a staggering 43% increased risk of death. However, it was only if they perceived the effects of stress as negative. Participants who viewed stress as positive had the lowest risk of dying of any group of people in the study. The level of stress wasn’t any different in these people, only their mindset and perception of the stress.
McGonigal references another study, though of far less people (850), between the ages of 34-93 in Detroit, Michigan. Conducted by Michael J. Poulin of the University of Buffalo, he and his team asked participants to report stressful events they'd encountered over the past year. Every major stress event, as McGonigal mentions, increased the risk of death by 30%. However, that increase was completely erased in those who reported high rates of helping others. This echos parts of the World Happiness Report, and what it said about generosity and welfare. Generosity is a win-win; it helps others, it increases happiness, and it can reduce the risk of death.
I want to share one more piece of research, which Kari Leibowitz writes about in How to Winter. This is something you may have heard of before, called the placebo effect. Placebos, in short, are an inactive treatment, often in the form of a sugar pill, that are used to help determine a drug’s effectiveness. However, participants take placebos believing that they’re active drugs. Studies have found that placebos can result in reduction of pain or significant improvement in as many as 30-40% of people who receive them.
Let me reiterate this, if it wasn’t clear before, a placebo is not an active treatment or drug. However, in many studies, the people taking the placebo believed it was an active treatment and believed that their symptoms would improve or that their pain would be reduced. And the health of many people improved. This speaks to the power of our mindsets and perceptions.
“Resigning ourselves to trudging through the season costs us. At best, we're missing the joys and delights of a special time, one unique in its opportunities for contemplation, connection, and delight. At worst, though, we're sleepwalking through a third of the year or more--meaning we're opting out of fully embracing months of our lives. Whether we're aware of them or not, our mindsets impact our experience of winter.” ― Kari Leibowitz, How to Winter
Cozying on up to winter
Norwegians call it “koselig”, Danish call it “hygge”, and the Dutch say “gezellig”. They all are different words, and certainly have different nuances, but in English they largely have a similar meaning of coziness. But if you look up some of these words, especially “hygge,” you’ll find that it’s not just a word, but more of a lifestyle and dare I say a mindset. It’s a mindset that I think we could adopt more of in America, approaching winter as less of a season of lack, absence, wanting, and surviving, and approach it is as more of a season of possibilities and opportunities that are unique to this time of year.
I say all this as a reformed experiencer of winter. I wrote in my journal earlier this month that I felt like I’d finally come around to having a generally positive mindset about winter and saw it as more a season of thriving rather than surviving. It only took until my fourth winter of living in the Pacific Northwest.
But it’s been a practice. After all, did you read what I just said about it taking me several years of living in a place that has something of a traditional winter for me to start thriving in it? But so it is with life, growth, and developing just about any type of change.
Yes, I’ve been more specifically talking about winter and how we approach it. But as Katherine May alludes to in her wonderful book, Wintering, I believe that seasons are a microcosm of life itself. Like life, we can’t control the seasons or change them or wield them to our desires. But we do have control over how we approach the literal and figurative seasons of life. To quote Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture, “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
“I recognized winter. I saw it coming (a mile off, since you ask), and I looked it in the eye. I greeted it and let it in. I had some tricks up my sleeve, you see. I've learned them the hard way. When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favored child: with kindness and love. I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important. I kept myself well fed and made sure I was getting enough sleep. I took myself for walks in the fresh air and spent time doing things that soothed me. I asked myself: What is this winter all about? I asked myself: What change is coming?” ― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
For your next dinner party
I’ve mentioned two primary books in this essay, Katherine May’s Wintering and Kari Leibowitz’s How to Winter. They are both fantastic, and I can’t recommend them enough. Wintering is more of a memoir, which I’ve begun treating as like a winter advent read; the book is split into sections by month starting with September. How to Winter is more sciencey combined with some recommendations at the end of each chapter on how to winter.
I want to end by sharing one of my favorite habits that I’ve developed in recent years. Every three months I go away for a night around the time of the season changes, and I write about the previous 2-3 months, what I’ve learned, how I’ve grown, what stood out, and so on. I then jot down a list of intentions and things I’d like to spend my free time doing over the course of the following season. I do this every season, but winter has become my favorite time of year to do this in part because some of the things that I do are so distinct and unique to winter.
Some of them are very small things that bring me joy, like going to a bar regularly to watch my favorite basketball teams or going to the arcade to play old-school games. Others are non-negotiable things that I see as necessary for connection, joy, and having a positive wintertime mindset. These include things like half-day trips down one of my favorite highways to go to my favorite place to cold plunge and sauna. Winter also involves a lot of cooking, making sauces and soups that I freeze, and baking. Highlights from this week included this fantastic banana bread recipe from Cookie + Kate.
May your winter be cozy, restful, and delicious. If you’ve adopted some meaningful winter practices, or end up developing some this winter, I’d love to hear them.
