Hygge… all Danes know what it is, but all the same find it difficult to convey to foreigners. Expressions in other languages seem to fall short. ‘Cosy’ is too smug, ‘Gemütlich’ is too folksy.

Hygge is lighting a welcoming candle when visitors arrive or meeting friends or colleagues in a candlelit café. It is cuddling up on the couch on a winter’s eve wrapped in a woollen blanket with a good book and a mug of hot chocolate, or lighting up the stove and spending the evening with the family watching a good movie and eating sweets. It is the even, soft light of the PH lamps, designed so not to shine in your eye, and the subtle light that Le Klint lampshades bring to the otherwise darkest corners of your home. Hygge is the smell of home baked cookies in the oven and wrapping Christmas trees on the front lawn with seasonal decorative lights. Hygge is about bringing light to the darkness and warmth to the cold.

October in Denmark is when you feel the dark time of year encroaching. This is when clocks are set back one hour and summertime becomes wintertime. Soon you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. You have to get used to it, and it does make weekends quite manic when the Danes finally have time to enjoy a few hours of light.

During the long summer days, Danes become passionate outdoor enthusiasts visiting the forests, beaches and marinas, and the towns are steeped in southern European atmosphere. But during the dark months of autumn and winter, Danes seek the indoors. Yet on Saturdays and Sundays, the scarce hours of sunlight are utilised with rare intensity:

If the sun is out, the Danes head for the fading forest to savour the golden leafy palette, reaching from warm yellow over claret to dark brown. This time of year before leaf fall should be experienced from a place of natural beauty – for instance one of the old country inns by the many historical stately homes and manor farms – or perhaps at a windswept off-season classic seaside hotel.

If the wind is brisk, families put on their coats and go to the coast or a park carrying kites under their arms – or go chestnut hunting and then return to the warmth of their home to make animal figures with them using matchsticks. If snow has fallen, the sledge runs draw children like magnets. And if they feel that being outdoors is too cold, they flock to the architecturally splendid art museums and centres where light conditions are optimal and colourful modern art conveys its inner passion to these pale people called Danes. And they soak it all up – craving for light, for colour and for warmth. Sting sings ’At Night a Candle’s Brighter than the Sun’, perhaps with special reference to the Danish Isles?

The climate may sound harsh, but most Danes have actually learnt to cherish the changing seasons. At any rate, that is what Danes who have moved to southern skies always say. It is not hard to find a Dane who after a long and warm summer yearns for a little cold and dark and... hygge. They even look forward to pulling out their thick jumpers and sturdy trousers, getting out their winter boots and wrapping themselves in scarves – this daily struggle against the climate has become a part of the fashion picture in Denmark. Danish fashion designers can thank the climate for the scope of their collections. And adding their kinship to the famous Danish functionalist furniture designers, Danish fashion design has become a versatile affair of practicality and style with an impact far beyond our national borders.

In the time up to Christmas, sunlight is scarce. The winter solstice on 22 December marks the shortest day of the year where the sun rises as late as 8:39 and sets as early as 15:36. Light, however, streams from the illuminated high streets with the famous Strøget in Copenhagen as the most dazzling. In Denmark, the seasonal culinary traditions lend an added dimension to Christmas shopping.

At classic lunch restaurants all over the country there is a run on herring. Here you can also experience traditional Danish Christmas lunches, which are carefully orchestrated symphonies of cold and hot dishes, almost ritually washed down with cold beer and even colder schnapps.

When winter darkness falls in the afternoon, head for the cosy cafés in town or the comfy country inns to warm your frozen hands on a glass of gløgg, a kind of mulled wine and port with added spices, raisins and chopped almonds which is served with home baked cinnamon cookies, of course. Or you can visit one of the many Christmas markets all over the country. Even the historical amusement park Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, which most people associate with warm summer evenings, opens its gates to an enchanted Christmas market in the heart of the Danish capital – most romantic of all is the small lake where lanterns and Christmas lights lend a magic glow to the red-cheeked ice-skaters, who keep naturally warm yet all the same quite often end the day with gløgg and small doughnuts called æbleskiver.

Even in the cold months of January and February, the Danes are hard to beat – some even seek colder heights in Norway and Sweden for skiing. These dark months of biting frost are, however, still lit from within by the warm, homey light that the Danes love, yet now with a light somewhat dimmer and more silent than during the festive season of Christmas.

But suddenly two months have passed since winter solstice, and you realise to your delight that daylight hours have increased considerably. And then we start to dream of spring and the first sprouting flowers and herbs that emerge from the frozen ground in March.