The COVID-19 pandemic has us all shut up inside, safe from the virus, but miserable. We’re deprived of sunshine, of fresh air, of the living ground. Human beings just don’t feel right when they’re closed up inside giant boxes all day every day.
The Norwegians have a word for the right feeling we get when we’re able to escape the architecture of civilized life. They call it friluftsliv, which literally means “free air life”, but figuratively means much more.
Friluftsliv is both the practice of purposefully spending significant amounts of time outdoors and the emotion that this practice engenders. It’s a cultural frame of mind particular to the people of Norway, but shared by many subcultures around the world, even if they don’t have an exact name for it.
The concept of friluftsliv is that when people are able to spend significant amounts of time outdoors in natural environments, they feel more at ease. Somehow, spending time in nature realigns people’s minds and bodies, getting them back in tune. Part of this is the presence of attention that friluftsliv summons. Part of it is remembering a larger sense of where we live and what we belong to, the world that always exists outside of society and the anxiety it fosters. Friluftsliv isn’t an assemblage of parts, however. It’s about a whole experience that can’t be dissected and recreated artificially, because it’s about having time and space that’s free of design and engineering.
