When I founded the world’s first Happiness Research Institute in 2013, in Copenhagen, Denmark, I wanted to better understand the impacts on human happiness, inform policymakers and ultimately improve the overall quality of life for citizens across the world.

Since then, I’ve sold over 2 million copies of four globally bestselling books. My latest, The Art Of Danish Living, is probably one of my most valuable pieces of work to date, providing simple tools we all need to reduce stress, increase our sense of purpose and live the Danish way.

One of these ways, which feels particularly poignant, is observing the meaning of the term dugnadsånd, which in English translates as ‘community spirit’ or ‘volunteer spirit’, referring to the collective willingness of people to come together in the context of community projects – emphasising cooperation and selflessness.

Think about it, whether you are painting your flat or building a terrace, we’re talking about substantial work that we use our leisure time to complete, and which seems to blur the boundaries between ‘work’ and ‘life’. However, one way to make it enjoyable is to take inspiration from the traditional way of ‘raising a barn’ in many societies.

Building a huge structure like a barn is a big project and requires more hands and muscle than is typically found in one family. So, historically, calling on your local community to help (unpaid) with raising a barn was common, especially in the US in the 18th and 19th centuries. Helping each other out through reciprocation made the whole community stronger, more resilient and, I would argue, also happier. Gathering friends or neighbours and turning the labour into a more enjoyable event meant building not only barns but also friendships.

The tradition lives on in Amish communities, but also on a smaller scale here in many places in Denmark and other Nordic countries. In Denmark, we would call this ‘arbejdsfællesskab’ - a ‘work community’ – and in Finnish, ‘talkoot’ is the word for a gathering of friends and neighbours organised to achieve a task, something that may be a common good for the group and that cannot be accomplished by an individual alone. In Norwegian, there are the words ‘dugnad’, meaning voluntary work done together with other people and ‘dugnadsånd’, meaning the spirit of dugnad, which was voted word of the year in Norway in 2004 and was used to help overcome the pandemic in 2020.

My friend Ida and her family have worked together in this way with two other families. Each year, each of the three families plans a big project, for instance to build an outdoor pizza oven, a chicken coop or a fence for the land where their sheep graze. Together, they complete the three projects – one in the spring, one in the summer and one in the autumn – on rotation. Each family makes sure the necessary materials and supplies are brought, and everyone brings tools. They work, eat, and laugh together. Sounds like a great weekend to me.

Working together is much more enjoyable; the project is completed much faster, and it’s a great way to learn new skills from others. So don’t be shy – invite people over to help you out with your project. There will be plenty of happiness in it for them, too. 

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Images: Getty