My Favorite New Word of 2018 & an Invite to Magnolia Salon in Carlton

Photo by Kenny Luo on Unsplash

This past year I began blogging on Medium. One of the publications I have been getting involved with is called The Writing Cooperative, and one of the writers there has been creating a blog series titled "Words You Have Taught Me" which, as the name suggests, features words that he's come across while reading other writers' blog posts.

David Foster Wallace famously loved learning new words, and somewhere in my youth I had a teacher who taught us to underline words we didn't know so we could look them up and add them to our own vocabularies.

All this to say that of all the new words I came across in 2018, the one that most stands out is hygge. It's a Danish word that we were introduced to last February at a Magnolia Salon gathering at Oldenburg House in Carlton. Hygge, one of those words with an umlaut sounding vowel that is strange to pronounce in our clumsy English, carries a meaning one might associate with mindfulness, creativity and flow. Another translation associates the word with coziness and contentment. Think of being nestled before a warm fireplace with friends, being laid back, reflective.

This is where some of the magic happens.

It doesn't look like it would be pronounced hoo-ga, but that's probably the closest you will get. I mention this new word because there has been a study done to determine the most hygge cities in the nation, and Minnesota's Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul) ranked third in coziness. You can read the full story here in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

According to the article it means more than comfort. It conveys that sense of spending time with friends. And for this reason, one of the first weekly Magnolia Salon gatherings at Oldenburg House last year focused on helping us understand this word.

* * * *

Tonight is the beginning of 2019 and the first gathering of Magnolia Salon at the Oldenburg House. Storyteller Cynthia Johnson will be sharing beginning at 6 p.m. Next week, Almanac Coffee's roaster will be sharing secrets about one of our favorite, most aromatic beverages derived from beans.

On Friday & Saturday next week (January 11 & 12) Ricky and Patty Peterson will be the featured performers Cookin' @ the O.

To learn more about these and other events taking place at Oldenburg House, visit and bookmark oacc.us.

To learn more about H00-ga (Hygge) check out this story about the day I learned the word in 2018. Yes, it took place at Magnolia Salon.