"The winters can be… well…
Let’s just say it’s not so very good
But even at this latitude
We’ll keep a happy attitude!"
Those are the lyrics of the song “Hygge” from Disney’s ”Frozen.” When I hear "hygge" or read about Scandinavians actually enjoying winter by creating warm comfortable spaces in which to share comfort food and quality time with the people they love, I can’t help but think of beavers.

In spring, summer and fall, the cliché “busy as a beaver” is a pretty good description of this dam building rodent.
But the way researchers describe it, the winter lodge-life of a beaver family sounds a whole lot like hygge. The beaver family just sits around together inside their cozy lodge.
The beavers go into winter well-prepared. Not all of the trees they chew down are used as building materials. Beavers store a generous supply of branches underwater.
The beavers clip the twigs from the saplings and branches. Then, while holding the wood in their teeth, they drag it to the bottom of their pond, jamming the sticks into the mud near one of the underwater entrances of their lodge. By the time a pond freezes over, the underwater cache usually has more than enough food to see the whole beaver family through the winter.
The whole family? Often. two, even three generations spend the winter in the frozen lodge. Well, it's frozen on the outside. Inside, all those warm bodies keep it quite warm. Dimly lit, but warm.
When a beaver wants food during winter, it is a simple matter for him to swim out to the cache and play pickup sticks. He has an amazing adaptation on his mouth — sort of a flap — that seals out water so well he can carry wood while submerged.
He swims it back into the lodge, chews it down to a convenient sizes, then the family gnaws off the outer bark and eats.
It’s unlikely that beavers would starve during winter. If they run out of food in the cache, they just eat their lodge. Hygge!