Friluftsliv Is The Secret To Norwegian Happiness: And It Sucks.

It was negative 13 degrees Celsius (8.6 degrees Fahrenheit) when Lorelou Desjardins took a break from her workday to take a walk on the frozen lake near her home in Oslo, Norway. She was accompanied by her husband, who had recently been on four months of paternity leave, and their infant son.

Not only was she encouraged by her employer to take this walk — she is paid one hour per week to exercise or spend time outdoors. It's one of the several times she goes outdoors during the workday.

That's thanks to friluftsliv (pronounced FREE'-loofts-liv), a Norwegian custom that means living "life in fresh air," or more simply, spending time outdoors and being active.

Full story here.

It’s really just going outside, huh. Jesus christ talk about a misleading headline. It could have been anything, a miracle drug, or a supplement found in Norwegian moss. This got me thinking that the reason for Scandinavian happiness was obvious. That we were fools for missing it. Of course these descendants of vikings are happier in the cold than us, they’re descended from vikings. While we’d rather sit inside and catch a deadly virus than sit outside under a 21st century space heater, these people are descended from people who ran around in the snow without shirts. I know I’m comparing two different historical eras and everything I know about vikings comes from the show, you guessed it, Vikings- but it’s my blog so the point stands. 

Here I am thinking that fruitislav is some fruit that grows on icicles out there, but it’s really just a state of mind? What kind of bullshit is that? We can’t pay for that. We can’t grind it up and snort it. We can’t pay your government for it. We can’t watch the prices rise as you become the beneficiaries of a bidding war for something you’ve never been without. We can’t eventually tire of this bidding war and start a campaign of slander and false flag operations to eventually wage  war on you to topple your entire infrastructure, ruin hundreds of millions of lives all to save a penny! No! We can’t do any of that with this positive mindset stuff. Your miracle to finding happiness in the coldest, darkest months is to spend more time outside! In the cold! In the dark! In the cold, dark outside! 

I understand the idea behind this, but I also think it’s stupid: stupid as fuck. Sure “mind over matter” and “going outside makes you feel better” but we’ve reached our quota of that for the foreseeable future. We’ve gotta put a pin in that way of thinking until we can go outside with being reminded that we’re in the midst of a spectacularly bad health crisis. I think we’ve definitely earned the right to be miserable bastards for the rest of 2021, and I’d go as far as to say we’re set through 2022. I know everybody’s talking about how much we’ll go out and socialize when it’s safe, but on the other hand I think we’ve earned a full year post-vaccine of just being able to stay inside because we want to, not because we need to. It’ll just be nice to choose unhappiness again instead of being assigned it.

Also what about cause and effect? Ever heard of Nietszche you dumb fucks? Are the people less miserable than me because they’re going outside? Or are they going outside because they’re less miserable than me?  I think there’s an argument to both sides of that. If I NEVER  go outside than obviously my mental health is going to suffer, nobody’s denying that. But if I’m a miserable person than I’m still going to be miserable, the only difference is I’ll be outside.