The Little Book of Lykke: The Danish Search for the World's Happiest People(2)

A couple who are sharing their fifty-two weeks of paid maternity and paternity leave are strolling along the waterfront. A group of students are swimming in the clean water in the harbour, carefree, because not only are there no university tuition fees, students also receive the equivalent of ￡590 (after tax) every month from the government. Everything runs smoothly in Denmark. Well, almost. Four years ago, one train did arrive five minutes late. The passengers each got a letter of apology from the prime minister and a designer chair of their choice as compensation.

With headlines like these over the last ten years, it may be easy to imagine Denmark as some sort of utopia.





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Let’s get one thing out of the way: I am a big fan of Denmark, both as a happiness scientist and as a citizen. When I see seven-year-old children cycle safely to school on their own, I smile. When I see parents leaving their kids to sleep unsupervised outside cafés in strollers without worrying about it, I smile. When I see people swimming in the clean water of the inner harbour of Copenhagen, I smile.

To me, it is unsurprising that a peaceful country, where there is free and universal health care, where your kids can go to university no matter how much money you earn and where little girls can imagine themselves prime minister should be one of the happiest countries in the world, according to the World Happiness Reports commissioned by the United Nations.

But does this mean that Denmark is a perfect society? No. Do I think that Denmark provides relatively good conditions for its citizens to enjoy a relatively high level of quality of life and happiness? Yes. I also believe that Japan had the longest average life expectancy in the world last year, but it doesn’t mean that I think that every Japanese person lives to exactly 83.7 years of age.

Denmark may usually top the lists of the world’s happiest countries, but it is important to understand that these rankings are based on averages. For instance, in the latest World Happiness Report, Danes reported an average of 7.5 on a scale from 0 to 10.

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It also means that while some things work extremely well, other things are rotten in the state of Denmark. Scandinavian countries may do well in the happiness rankings – but neither Danes, Norwegians nor Swedes hold a monopoly on happiness. Living in Denmark has taught me that, while we can all learn a lot from the Scandinavian countries when it comes to quality of life, we can find lessons in happiness from people from all over the world. The keys to happiness are buried around the world, and it is our job to gather them up.

If we look at the World Happiness Report, there is a four-point happiness gap between the happiest and unhappiest countries, and three points of these four are explained by six factors: togetherness or sense of community, money, health, freedom, trust and kindness. I have dedicated one chapter to each of these factors, and in each we will explore why these things affect well-being, we will take lessons of happiness from people from around the world and we will uncover the ways in which we ourselves may become happier – and, in the end, how we may put these pieces together to create a treasure map of happiness.

Meanwhile, 80 per cent of the difference in happiness across the world happens within countries. In other words, you may find very happy Danes and very unhappy Danes – and you may find very happy and very unhappy Togolese. So it is one thing to look at the policies countries offer; our behaviour and our perspective on life are another thing entirely.

So, what are the common denominators among the world’s happiest people, what can be learned from countries around the globe when it comes to happiness and what actions may be taken in order to make ourselves happier? These are some of the questions this book seeks to answer: it will uncover the secrets of the world’s happiest people and look for the good that does exist in the world. Let’s go on a treasure hunt!





HOW DO YOU MEASURE HAPPINESS?


On the morning of 9 November 2016, I was woken at 5 a.m. by the emergency alarm in the hotel I was staying in. I was in the heart of Paris for a round of interviews and the city was approaching the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the city.

Outside the lobby, the guests gathered, bleary-eyed, in their white bathrobes. At 5.30 a.m., the hotel was given the all-clear, but there was no point in me trying to get back to sleep. Adrenalin was still pumping through me, and I had just returned from Asia, so my body clock was seven hours ahead of local time. I decided I might as well work and opened my suitcase to get my laptop. That’s when I discovered I had left my brand-new computer on the plane (always check the seat pocket!). And I hadn’t backed up the first chapters of this book anywhere other than on the now missing laptop.

I was frustrated, tired and angry with myself. I thought I could do with some good news and realized the votes would by now have been counted in the US presidential election and I thought it might cheer me up to see the victory speech of the first female US president, so I turned on the news.

That day I had eight interviews lined up. Eight journalists, who would most likely all ask the question: ‘You study happiness – so how happy are you?’





So, how happy was I? Can you quantify feelings? How do we measure happiness?

The way the world has been measuring happiness for decades can be summed up like this: Imagine two friends meeting after a long time. ‘How are you?’ the one friend asks the other. ‘I make 40,800 euros per year,’ she replies. No one talks like this, but this is how we have been measuring well-being traditionally. We have been saying that money equals happiness. And while money may matter – it is not the only thing that contributes to our happiness.