Born to Endure
Hygge, Well-Being, and Happiness in the Pacific Northwest
“Oh the bitter winds are coming in and I’m already missing the summer. Stockholm’s cold but I’ve been told I was born to endure this kind of weather.” — First Aid Kit, ‘Emmylou’
In October of 2012, sisters Kara and Johanna Söderberg performed their second studio session at Seattle’s non-commercial radio station, KEXP. Their vocals harmonized into a sad, folksy twang over heartbeat drums. They go by the name First Aid Kit.
Elie Nederloe and I were sipping mulled wine from charcoal-black ceramic mugs when she first mentioned the band to me. Star anise and blood orange slices floated in the opaque liquid, the scent of citrus and spice wafting across the table. I had invited her out to attend a Julefest celebration at the Nordic Museum, and by now we had made our way over to Skal Beer Hall. They take the viking aesthetic pretty seriously there, with heavy wooden furniture on the floor and snow white animal skins hanging from the walls.
Scattered throughout Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, just north of Discovery Park and a few miles west from the U District, modest bakeries, cafés, markets, restaurants, and museums tell a story of cultural exchange between the PNW and the far flung Nordic region four and a half thousand miles away. Elie (pronounced “eh-lee,” not “ee-lie,” as she joked during a spontaneous standup bit one night) often acknowledged her Norwegian-American heritage, especially when she was cooking and baking at home.
Between crunchy bites of bread with lingonberry jam, I asked Elie about her background. I wanted to know how Nordic culture had influenced her decision to move to Seattle, and her lived experience here. That’s when she quoted lyrics from the First Aid Kit song Emmylou: “Oh the bitter winds are coming in . . . but I’ve been told I was born to endure this kind of weather.”
Elie moved to Seattle from Minneapolis after she secured a teaching position at an outdoor preschool. I met her over zoom, during a virtual tour of the four-bedroom house in Queen Anne that I had been renting with a group of fellow University of Washington (UW) alum. We immediately fell in love with her bright energy as she told us about her creative hobbies, her commitment to outdoor education, and her passion for cooking and baking.
Why would an outdoor educator choose to move to rainy Seattle, which consistently ranks as both the saddest and the most anxious metro area in the United States? Despite the fair warnings we gave her about the long, dark winter months, Elie never showed any fear. In fact, she had this determined confidence, bragging that back in Minneapolis, her dad goes on bike rides in -20°F weather.
When she arrived, Elie was surprised to discover that Seattle is home to its own vibrant Nordic community, albeit less concentrated than in her hometown of Minneapolis. At the National Nordic Museum I had learned more about our history of immigration and cultural exchange from the region. I learned that the term “Nordic” refers to Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and the Sami peoples, and that nearly 2.7 million of them crossed the Atlantic bound for America between 1840 and 1914.
“At last the necessary preparations had been made and we were ready to leave our dear old home, where we had been born and reared, the old village with its familiar scenes… It was a day that I shall never forget.” — Eric Norellus, emigrated from Sweden, 1850, as printed by the National Nordic Museum in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood
“Minneapolis also has a strong Nordic / Scandinavian presence. I’ve dated two or three Norwegians,” Elie explained. In fact, over 100,000 Minnesotans, or nearly 2% of the state’s population, identify with Scandinavian ancestry. That makes it the single most concentrated Nordic population in the United States, according to the 2021 US Census. “We share a common upbringing, a common grounding.” Elie hopes to cultivate that familiar warmth in her own family someday.
Her life in Minneapolis was full of pop-up arts and craft stands, live music, and chickens. She still maintains a decidedly cottagecore aesthetic online. Self-sufficient to a fault, Elie’s parents taught her to be frugal, to master DIY living, and to give things away. She learned to sew her own clothes and make her own jewelry. She sells her handmade earrings online and at street fairs despite the common sentiment she heard growing up that it was better not to charge for her creations. She still struggles to ask fair pay for her labor, a lingering side-effect from her industrious upbringing.
The Söderberg sisters, on the other hand, were born in Sweden where they attended an international English school. Old country music fed their curiosity for the exotic appeal of American culture. In 2008 they covered Seattle’s Fleet Foxes’, “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song,” which went viral on YouTube. Perhaps that’s why they have an impressive record of performances in Seattle. Most recently they played back-to-back nights at Paramount Theater.
“When the Söderberg sisters did finally arrive on stage about a half hour after Hurray for the Riff Raff, the audience boomed and roared with sheer excitement,” writes Natalie Roy for UW’s The Daily. Their lyrics often express a sad hopefulness, like a willingness to fall in love despite the pain it causes. According to Elie, the opening line to Emmylou “encompasses the Scandinavian spirit… It’s cold and dark but as long as you’re surrounded by good people, food, and drink, you’ll have a good time.”
I was familiar with this concept of the “Scandinavian spirit.” After I graduated from college, I continued lurking in the textbook section of the University Bookstore. I would see what required readings accompanied courses on Biology, Russian language and literature, Cinema Studies, and whatever else peaked my interest. One day, I bought a coffee table book that managed to make the syllabus for a Scandinavian Studies course. It was written by a happiness researcher named Meik Wiking called ‘The Little Book of Hygge.’
That small, square, hardcover book was full of color photographs. Lucious green spaces, wood textures, and coffee cups accentuated the research-backed discussions of happiness, well-being, and the particular Nordic understanding of the thing we approximately translate as “coziness.”
“If hygge was a person, I think it would be Alice Waters. With a casual, rustic, and slow approach to life, she embodies many of the key elements of hygge — and she also seems to understand the value of good, hearty food in the company of good people.” — Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge
I latched onto this concept of hygge because we have an ongoing narrative in the Pacific Northwest that we’re anxious and depressed because it’s wet, because it’s dark, because we drink too much coffee — and here was this book, claiming that Danes are the happiest people in Europe because they live in a place that’s wet, dark, and highly caffeinated.
Frustrated by the same lame advice offered time and time again to Seattleites, like “drinking noncaffeinated beverages that will replenish your electrolytes, drinking a lot of water and trying to find ways to calm yourself down, such as taking a walk,” I wanted to access this Nordic secret to happiness. Maybe, I thought, I could find that “Scandinavian spirit” in the multitude of Nordic restaurants, cafés, shops, and bakeries clustered near Ballard.
From our house in Queen Anne, I walked down the road to Byen Bakeri, where I found espresso and a rotation of seasonal pastries. In the summertime, I fell in love with their Asparagus Danish, and in the winter, I indulged in their Almond Kringle. Anytime of year, I could take home a slice of the famous Princess Cake, a traditional Swedish cake that layers spongecake, pastry cream and raspberry jam under a shell of marzipan.
“The high level of meat, confectionery and coffee consumption in Denmark is directly linked to hygge. Hygge is about being kind to yourself — giving yourself a treat, and giving yourself, and each other, a break from the demands of healthy living. Sweets are hyggelige. Cake is hyggeligt. Coffee or hot chocolate are hyggeligt, too. Carrot sticks, not so much.” — Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge
I asked Elie what life was like back home in Minneapolis. “As soon as you walk in, that’s the first thing you see. A Norwegian flag.” Elie’s great great grandparents settled in Wisconsin on her dad’s side and North Dakota on her mom’s side. Her parents met in Minneapolis — home to the largest Nordic community in the United States. Right away she mentioned, “We always have Lefse at Christmas.”
Lefse is like a Norwegian crépe, made with a long stick known as a Lefse stick. “I’ll have to make it for you,” she promised. She also mentioned krumkake, a scrumptious Norwegian waffle cookie, and lutefisk, which consists of air-dried codfish soaked in a lye solution. “It’s horrible. We had to eat it until we were 18-years-old.”
The dish can be dated back to 1555, well before it was possible to preserve meat through the winters. In modern day Norway, apparently, no one eats Lutefisk. Elie explains why the dish is still eaten in America: “Norwegian culture is still moving forward, while Norwegian culture here is very much stagnant.”
I see what she means: Norwegian-American culture is like a time-capsule. Even though she has living relatives in Norway, and elected to study Norwegian at St. Olaf College, Elie has never been to visit the country. Certain aspects of her identity will always call back to the traditions that traveled across the Atlantic generations ago. At the same time, I look at Elie, and groups like First Aid Kit, and I see young people playing with culture like a sandbox, fostering creativity and bringing fresh flavors out into the world.
Despite her knowledge of Norwegian and Swedish recipes, Elie’s best treats are always original concoctions. My personal favorite is her lemon cookie with matcha frosting. “When I was younger I would sit on the floor and my parents would put a spice in front of me and let me play with it while they cooked.”
“How hyggelig a food is also lies in its preparation. The rule of thumb is: the longer a dish takes to cook, the more hyggelig it is . . . It is important to stress that the process need not revolve around the simmering of some meaty old Nordic cuisine. It is about the process, not the end product.” — Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge
As much as I enjoyed tasting my way through Scandinavian cafés, I came to understand that happiness can’t be simply bought and sold. Some part of me wanted to find a simple solution for the deep pain we all experience in life, but my investigation challenged me to form a more nuanced perspective. It’s not just what you eat, but how you eat that matters.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could buy a perfect slice of cake and forget about all our problems? Talking with Elie, I knew that she embodied hygge. She carried the Scandinavian Spirit inside her everywhere she went. Yet, her life isn’t simply “happy.” Elie confounded me sometimes, because she could be the life of the party one night, and open up about her internal pain and suffering the next.
“I think a big part of it is being a good host. Having that minimal, cozy style. More than just the appearance, but bringing it into your attitude. I try to embody that warm hug feeling all the time.” — Elie Nederloe
A few months before moving to Seattle, Elie’s best friend Anna Leikvold died in a climbing accident. “She always knew she would die young,” Elie told me one night. While we lived together, she shared so many stories with me about this big-hearted girl, who lived with zest and wove lives together like threads in a blanket. “Anna was everyone’s best friend.” I always left those conversations wishing I could have met her, but feeling that I had known her in some way, through Elie.
“I have completed my journey towards the sun, and it has only just begun.” — Anna Leikvold
The more that I listened to Elie’s stories, the more I felt that the secret to Nordic happiness is a sober, wholehearted acceptance of the darkness. The cutting harmonies of First Aid Kit certainly seem to suggest so.
Anna was living in Fort Collins, Colorado, coincidentally the same city where I was born, when she died in a climbing accident. Though I was raised in the PNW, I’ve always felt an affiliation for the sunny Rockies, the way that Elie perhaps grew up with an affiliation for deep coastal fjords. Anna’s bold move to Colorado inspired Elie to take a chance on Seattle, but Anna left Minneapolis to escape a harshness there that Elie didn’t seem to mind.
“It’s always sunny in Colorado. You can’t hide in the sadness here, and I suppose that is good. I am pushing it away, like the frozen earth in Minnesota, and the bodies that built me into who I am. It still lives inside me, and I have never been great at hiding anything so it rushes out through silence and pulled blinds. I love the sun in Colorado and the way it pulls me out of bed. I love the mountains that are only green for two months and change before settling into their golden hue. I love the dry air. The mosquitos don’t swarm here, and happiness makes sense. I always knew I would leave Minnesota. I suppose I have been running away since I took my first steps in the little house on Finley Avenue. I never expected the icy rivers to run through my body as they do. The pine tree I planted in the backyard as a small child is taller than me now. For a long time, we grew at the same rate, but I have completed my journey towards the sun, and it has only just begun.” — Transcription from a reading of Anna Leikvold’s writing at her memorial service in Fort Collins, Colorado
Elie and I talked about Brené Brown’s “twinkle light” metaphor. It’s this idea that a good life is made up of tiny joys strung together in the darkness. It’s something I ran into over and over again as I explored Nordic culture. This willingness to brave the darkness, the cold, the unknown, the awful in order to survive. Their story is one of survival, of a sacred belief that it’s the harshest seasons of life which make it all so damn beautiful.
“My parent’s always told me: You’re a Viking. Vikings don’t get cold . . . It’s a way of saying a country like Norway doesn’t have bad weather. There is no bad weather. It’s that you are not prepared for what’s happening. The world is beautiful and every part of it is beautiful. Even when it’s negative 20 degrees outside I find myself going outside and just sitting in it . . . We wouldn’t appreciate the summers as much without the winters.” — Elie Nederloe
Perhaps that explains, in part, how Elie managed to follow through with her move, despite the unexpected grief that struck just before she left home. It comes down to a belief that life is meant to be endured. The quiet patience we practice through slow cooking might just be the same quiet patience that allows the human heart to survive unimaginable loss.
We were soaking up the sun on one of those breakthrough, late Spring days. It was even warm enough to swim (for us cold weather folk). Elie and I floated out to the deep end at Madison Beach Park, our friends splashing around and sunbathing near shore. She told me she would love to come back to Seattle, after her student loans were paid off. An hour later, we hugged goodbye and I watched her disappear over the horizon in her swimsuit and sunhat. She went home to pack up her car and drive across state lines.
Elie moved back to Minneapolis after spending just under a year in Seattle. She survived the rainy season as an outdoor educator before starting a new job as Camp Director of the American Diabetic Association. Her new position required frequent travel to the Midwest, where many of her college friends still live. Maybe she really will move back to Seattle someday, but in the meantime I’ll have to learn how to bake those lemon cookies with matcha frosting.
