Winter will suck. We gathered some of Vox’s coziest minds to help you make it suck less.

Ida Skibenes, a 32-year-old born and raised in Norway, resides in Bergen, where by December, there is an average of six hours of daylight per day. Shorter days mean more time spent inside, sheltering from the cold. But as a result, Scandinavians are familiar with the business of creating bearable winters for themselves, bringing small joys to where despair might typically occur.

Seasonal depression affects around 10 million Americans, and winter may be even more difficult to manage for many as the pandemic continues on, and forces us to spend more time at home. We could use some Norwegian advice — “hygge,” a culture of coziness that has taken over the self-care space, is Scandinavia’s specialty. They’ve mastered and perfected the art of making winter less miserable. Skibenes spoke to Vox about how she survives winter, and her methods to combat feelings of isolation that come with the colder months of the year.

Tell me a little bit about your relationship with cold winters over the course of your life. Do you like winter? Do you not like winter?

I think growing up here you get used to it. You kind of don’t have a choice. Of course, some people will travel south, especially the older generation who will leave for Spain or Italy for a month or two when it gets really cold and really dark. But most of us just deal with it. We are used to having many months in a row where we don’t really see that much sun or daylight.

When it’s at its darkest, I think most people will struggle a little, maybe feel a little more tired. Especially if you work in an office and you don’t have the chance to step outside and get some sunlight on your face. It can be pretty hard because it’s dark when you leave in the morning and then it’s dark when you get home.

I struggle with how early it gets dark even in New York. Do you have any tips to combat that difficulty?

In some ways, [I’ve experienced it.] Especially with feeling more tired than in the summer months. That might be the hardest part. But I’m a full winter girl, so I kind of appreciate the dark. I think it’s cozier to get up in the morning when it’s dark outside.

I think that the most important thing you can do is keep your sleeping rhythm the same. Try to, if you have the chance during your day, get out and get some sun. If it’s only for like ten minutes, I think it can make a huge difference. We also have really bad weather, especially in November and December. It can be very tempting to just stay inside and just hunker down and wait for it to pass, but I think it’s really important to get that fresh air and just move around a little.

In Norway, we are very much professionals when it comes to making things cozy. Lighting candles and being under a blanket on a couch and playing games, so that’s in our blood I think.

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I actually wanted to ask you about that. I’ve read that the Scandinavian culture of coziness is called hygge. Can you tell me more about that?

I think Norway may be most explicit about it. We go all in. I think maybe it’s the way that we’ve kind of learned to survive through hard winters for a long time. We find a lot of comfort in just doing the really small things to make your home a bit more cozy and just lighten the mood. And a lot of us have grown up staying in family cabins — that’s a thing, where we would go to a cabin up in the mountains or by the sea or somewhere else.

That’s a peak level of coziness when you get to the cabin and you light the candles and play games and eat a lot of food. How it got that way, I’m not sure, but it’s just become this thing that most of us do, just a way of surviving those long months.

So it’s kind of like this culture of togetherness and warmth; it’s kind of like a purposeful escape from the dreariness of winter.

I think it’s interesting because we as a people here in Norway, we’re generally quite cold. We like to keep our distance from people. On the news now with Covid-19, they [say] “What did Norway do right? What did they do that we didn’t do?” And I think that often they miss the point of us being people that really, generally don’t like being around people that much.