N

S

I

Home and 'Hygge' in Tidens Kvinder, a Popular Danish Women's Magazine, 1930-1960

Mette Mechlenborg, Martin Søberg, and Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen

Privacy Studies Journal

V

1

4

9

: 279 4 -3

o l . 4  (2025 )

## Abstract

Studies on the modern Western home often relate its' origin to a particular kind of female-coded intimacy and family-oriented private space, based on new social and material norms related to the bourgeoisie.  However, there has been less focus on how this archetype developed historically during mid-20th century when popular culture started to dominate mediation on home and privacy, especially in the context of modernist architecture and design. This paper explores changing concepts of the private home in the Danish popular magazine Tidens Kvinder ( Today's Women) from 1930 to 1960. By examining housing features, home portraits, expert commentary, and editorials, the article shows how ideas of the private home are entangled with discussions of modernist design and architecture, representation of interiors and broader social contexts. The paper concludes that the Danish term hygge (cosiness) was promoted as a cultural mechanism of appropriation related to home as a private space. The magazine suggested that through hygge, homemakers could assert lived space against the abstraction of planned environments of rationality, functionalism and effectiveness. Thus, hygge served as an emotional and material tool to bridge past and future - linking early bourgeois notions of the home with the lifestyle dwelling that came to characterize modern Western suburbanization. Thus, the paper adds new insights into how popular culture and notions of privacy are closely linked.

## Keywords

Hygge - interior - home - popular culture - Denmark TIDENS KVINDER

DAMERNES ILLUSTREREDE UGEBLAD

## Introduction

In the 1952 editorial 'Hygge og Kultur i Hjemmet' (Cosiness and Culture of the Home) in the Danish magazine Tidens Kvinder: Damernes Illustrerede Ugeblad ( Today's Women: Ladies' Illustrated Weekly ), young couples are given advice on how to turn their new dwelling into a happy home. The editorial begins by evoking the joy of moving into a first home:

One of the happiest moments in one's life is when you are about to create your own home, regardless of whether you have a father who can buy you a villa or are lucky enough to get a one-bedroom apartment with a chamber. It is the most beautiful place on earth, home, where you can close the door to the evil and the gossip of the world and be alone with the one you like. 1

In 1952, Denmark-like many other European countries-was experiencing a housing shortage in the aftermath of World War II. There was an urgent need for new dwellings to accommodate ongoing urbanization, growing social mobility, and changing work and family culture. 2 The editorial addresses this context in which older forms of housing, such as  the  villa-the  preferred  solution  for  bourgeois  families-were  being  supplemented by  a  rapid  spread  of  new,  small  one-  and  two-bedroom  apartments  for  the  growing

middle class and working population, as a response to the lack of adequate housing in the overcrowded cities. Only 10-15 years later, the mass-produced single-family home would soon become one of the most popular  housing  solutions,  not  only  in Denmark,  but  in  many  modern  Western countries.

While  recognizing  the  architectural  and socio-economic  difference  between  these two dwelling types,  the  editorial  empha -sises  that  it  is  not  the  physical  dwelling that makes a home happy. Instead, it is the ability to create a private space where you can 'be alone with the one you like' and find shelter from 'the evil and the gossip of the outer world.' According to the edi -torial,  what  creates  a  happy  home  is  not architecture or objects, but cosiness-or, as the Danes call it, hygge . Hygge is described as a 'crucial value, which one [must] mutu -ally own and […] defend.' 3 Hygge is both a

(Figure 1) Tidens Kvinder was a Danish magazine that promoted modern ways of living from 1930 to 1960.

<!-- image -->

1 Ole Haslund, 'Hygge og Boligkultur,' Tidens Kvinder 2, (1952): 3.

2 Claus Bech-Danielsen, Moderne Arkitektur - hva' er meningen? (Systime, 2004).

3 Haslund, 'Hygge og Boligkultur,' 3.

C. Regniad

14. AARG. NR. 38

practice (something one does) and result (a dimension of the private home). Thus, maga -zines like Tidens Kvinder provided support to new dwellers of the modern home, and by doing so, they also promoted (new) norms on homemaking and privacy. 4

This premise aligns with privacy studies' claim that modern concepts of privacy are clo -sely tied to modern communication and new technologies such as print and photograp -hy. 5 While media enabled private affairs, personal stories, and representations of domestic spaces to circulate in the public realm, they also sparked debates over potential intrusions into privacy -often understood as intrusions into people's private homes. 6 Yet, less atten -tion has been put to how popular magazines also played a role in adapting new housing ideals into already established historical notions of home and privacy, and equally impor -tant, how these established notions affected public perspective on what a happy home is. The period 1930 to 1960 represents a time of change when Danish-and modern Westernhousing ideals went through radical development, particular with the introduction of modern architecture and design. As shown in the quote, Tidens Kvinder represented with their  focus  on  hygge  another  discourse  than  what  has  normally  been  identified  with modern architecture and design as being symbols of rationality, functionalism and effec -tivity. 7

This article investigates how Tidens Kvinder , a Danish popular women's magazine medi -ated and transformed notions of the home during a period from 1930 to 1960 marked by significant societal, architectural, and technological shifts. 8 By studying its editorials, home portraits, reader correspondence, and interior design features, we analyse how the magazine not only resisted particular cultural ideals of the modern home but also actively shaped alternatives.

The article draws on Henri Lefebvre's spatial understanding and his dual notion of domination and appropriation as well as Marshall McLuhan's dictum 'the medium is the message'. 9 The article builds on the premise that popular culture not only mediates the 'real' worldin this instance the home-but also plays a role in constructing it. We wish to show how Tidens Kvinder promoted new design, new architecture and technological innovations as aspiration of a modern and empowering lifestyle, while at the same time underscoring the concept of hygge across aesthetic, moral, and political discourses as a cultural stabili -zer of homemaking amid rapid change. Thus, hygge served not only as a style of domestic decoration but as a technique of emotional governance - a form of spatial and social orde - ring that helped maintain continuity with earlier bourgeois ideals while legitimizing new suburban and welfare-state realities. Thus, the article wishes to add new insights into how popular culture and notion of privacy are closely linked. As posed in a rhetorical question at the end of the editorial quoted in the beginning: 'Should happy  homes not be considered a prerequisite for a happy society?' 10

4 Haslund, 'Hygge og Boligkultur,' 3.

5 Lars Cyril Nørgaard, 'Past Privacy,' in Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches , eds. Michael Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, and Mette Birkedal Bruun (Brill, 2022), doi:10.1163/9789004153073\_002m.

6 Mette B. Bruun, 'Towards an Approach to Early Modern Privacy: The Retirement of the Great Condé,' in Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches , eds. Michael Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, and Mette Birkedal Bruun (Brill, 2022), doi:10.1163/9789004153073\_002m.

7 Bech-Danielsen, Moderne Arkitektur .

8 The article is part of the research project Good Living! The Development of Danish Housing Ideals 19301960 , supported by the Augustinus Foundation (2024-2026). Its purpose is to investigate Danish popular culture-mainly popular magazines-during the period 1930-1960, to examine how hou -sing ideals were mediated, negotiated, and developed.

9 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space , trans. D. Nicholson-Smith (Blackwell, 1991, original work published 1974); Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (MIT Press, 1994).

## Theoretical Framing and Concepts of Home in the Rise of Modernity

Recognizing that media content and context are not always clearly defined and that the construction of the modern home is also a product of media consumption, Roger Sil -verstone introduces the idea of 'a double articulation': media are both physically present and culturally significant, influencing cultural experiences and daily routines. 11 Media consumption, therefore, involves the broader cultural and social context. 12 As Sonja Sil -verstone has shown, the home is a critical site for this kind of double articulation. She positions the home as a space where media is not only consumed but negotiated, rituali -zed, and integrated into social relationships and identity practices. With this, she calls for greater theoretical integration in media studies, in which the technical, social, and sym -bolic dimensions of media and the home are studied together rather than in isolation. 13

To be able to work analytically with the mediazation of the home in Tidens Kvinder , our project develops its understanding of these mediations through Henri Lefebvre's notion of spatiality, particularly as articulated as a 'supreme court' in his influential work The Production of Space . 14 For Lefebvre, spatiality is constituted by three interrelated and expe -rience-based dimensionsa trialectic of space . The first dimension, perceived space, refers to physical, material space and to spatial practice: the ways in which space is used and inhabited in everyday life. The second dimension, conceived space, pertains to the design, planning, and ideological frameworks of a given spatial context-for example, the modern housing and the ideology of functionalism. The conceived space raises questions about the intentions underlying particular types of spaces and the values or cultural aspirati -ons that shape such spaces. Thus, conceived space is intrinsically linked to power. The third dimension, lived space, encompasses the everyday experience in which perceived and conceived spaces intersect and are brought to life. It is within lived space that power is enacted and contested. The conceived space with its inherent intention and ideology will try to dominate the lived space through the perceived space. 15

10 Haslund, 'Hygge og Boligkultur,' 3.

11 Thomas Berker et al., Domestication of Media and Technology (McGraw-Hill Education, 2005); Roger Silverstone, Television and Everyday Life (Routledge, 1994).

12 Grace Lees-Maffei, 'The Production-Consumption-Mediation Paradigm,' Journal of Design History 22, no. 4 (2009): 351-76.

13 Sonja Livingstone, 'On the Material and the Symbolic: Silverstone's Double Articulation of Research Traditions in New Media Studies,' New Media & Society 9, no. 1 (2006): 16-24, https://doi. org/10.1177/1461444807075200.

14 Lefebvre, The Production of Space , 6.

15 Lefebvre, The Production of Space , 6.

However, inhabitants are not merely passive victims of the domination of space. Instead, they possess the agency to appropriate things and make them their own. Appropriation, therefore, represents Lefebvre's counter concept to domination. It takes place through the creative use of materiality, which is then given personal value. Thus, appropriation is a meaning-making process that 'overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its object' . 16 The lived space is concerned with meaning, creativity, emotion, and how people experience, make sense of, or resist the physical and ideological structures of their surroundings. Lefebvre's concept of appropriation is often used to investigate how people make spaces their  own,  imprinting  them  with  meaning,  use,  and  everyday  practice. 17 This  idea  is particularly powerful when applied to the notion of the home, which, for Lefebvre, represents a key example of a space that ideally is appropriated rather than dominated. Therefore, in this article we will use Lefebvre's dual concept of domination and appropriation to frame the analysis of homemaking and new architecture and design in Tidens Kvinder .

## The Modern Home - Between Appropriation and Domination

The German thinker Walter Benjamin formulated the bourgeois home ideal as a 'box in the theatre of the world':

The private individual, who in the office has to deal with reality, needs the domestic interior to sustain him in his illusions. […] From this arises the phantasmagorias of the interior, which, for the private man, repre -sents the universe. In the interior, he brings together the far away and the long ago. His home is a box in the theatre of the world. 18

This notion of the home as something that stands in opposition to the outside worldwhile paradoxically also being a product of it-relates to new social, political, and mate -rial norms among the bourgeois elite in Anglo-American culture during the rise of urban capitalism. As Benjamin suggests, the home was an ideological construction that combi -ned private ownership ('the universe') with nostalgia ('the far away and the long ago') and a sense of spatial and psychological shelter ('the box' that will 'sustain him'). 19

While Benjamin was interested in design and architecture, more recent housing studies have argued that the core element of the bourgeois home was 'the Victorian cult of the family,' that is, the religious, family-oriented values that emerged as a counter-reaction to early industrialization in Britain in the mid-1800s. 20 With the Victorian family cult, the nuclear family-a social unit of close family members-was imbued with a new vulnera - bility and intimacy, especially in relation to the home. 21 Because motherhood and childrea -ring became central-partly due to the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ideas on free upbringing and new conceptions of marriage as a romantic relationship-a new family project emerged. 22 This vulnerability was difficult to reconcile with the open, chao -tic, and often promiscuous city at the edge of capitalism and modernism. According to urban historian Robert Fishman, this growing emotional engagement gave rise to a desire to 'separate' family life 'from the intrusions of the workplace and the city.' 23 Historians have thus identified a close relationship between the bourgeois villa and the spatial and functional separation of work and private life, of public and family space. 24 Although this separation was more ideological than actual, it played an important role in the develop -ment of a highly gendered domestic home culture. 25

16 Lefebvre, The Production of Space , 39.

17 Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Blackwell, 1996).

18 Walter Benjamin, 'Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,' in Reflections , ed. Peter Demed, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 155.

19 Benjamin, 'Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,' 155.

20 Lawrence Stones, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (Harper & Row, 1977).

Benjamin's definition of the bourgeois home, written in 1935, is also relevant because it appeared  when  modern  Western  societies  were  once  again  experimenting  with  new forms of dwellings. From the late 1920s until the early 1960s, industrialized mass hou -sing became dominant, as many countries promoted their own version of new residential building blocks and single-family houses. During this time, middle-class culture, consu -mer markets, architects, and designers increasingly advocated for modern design, ratio -nalism, and efficiency under the axiom of the International Style. 26 One of the movement's most influential figures, the French modernist architecht and writer Le Corbusier, critici -zed what he called the 'hysterical sentimentality' surrounding the bourgeois home and declared that it should be replaced by a 'living machine' of pure functionalism - concrete, glass, and steel. 27 Embedded in the task of solving housing shortage, overcrowded and unhealthy dwellings, architects, designers, and politicians advocated for a new conceived space of rationality and functionalism that would change the existing-not fit for modern life-physical environment; the historical perceived space, according to Lefebvre's spatial trialectic. 28

Benjamin argued along similar lines in his 1933 essay 'Erfarung und Armut' (Experi -ence and Poverty), suggesting glass and steel prevented what he described as the 'galva -nization' of the home-a reference to the decorated and ornamented interiors typical of the bourgeoisie. 29 'Glass is such a hard and flat material that nothing can stick to it,' he wrote. 'It is more than anything else an enemy of secrets. And an enemy of possession.' 30 Impli -citly, the bourgeois home was above all the place where things would 'stick.'

21 Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Polity Press, 1992).

22 Giddens, Transformation of Intimacy .

23 Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (Basic Books, 1987), 8.

24 See also Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Berg, 1986).

25 Judy Giles, The Parlour and the Suburb: Domesticity, Identification, Class, Femininity and Modernity (Berg Publishers, 2004).

26 Witold Rybczyński, Home: A Short History of an Idea (Pocket Book, 1986).

27 'Purism,' in Art in Theory 1900-1990 , eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Blackwell, 1992), 497-99.

28 Lefebvre, The Production of Space , 1991.

29 Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften , vol. 2, part 1 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977), 217-18. All translations from the German by the authors.

30 Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften , 217-18.

While acknowledging the impact of the International Style as a crucial and dominating element in the conceived space of modern planning, it is important to note that, contrary to its claims, modern architecture and design with its glass, concrete and steel was not always as rational, functional, or industrially efficient as it appeared. 31 As is widely accepted in design and architectural history, the International Style was at times more about appearance than substance: it looked practical, rational, and functional, rather than neces -sarily being so. 32 Emphasising discourse over outcome, the style was strongly shaped by its ideological critique of bourgeois ornamentation and decorative excess. 33 Furthermore, studies have shown that most housing designs categorized as modernist were adapted to local architectural and social housing traditions. 34 However, this retrospective perspec -tive has primarily been developed within design and architecture studies. Less attention has been paid to how, as a new idea of space, modern housing architecture and design were received by the general public in their own time, and how they were mediated, negoti -ated, and appropriated with different strategies into existing housing cultures and local perceptions of what constitutes a decent home.

This article thus aligns with media studies that have identified strong connections between domestic representation in popular media and individual culture of home desire, especially through advice on style and everyday life. 35

## Empirical Data and Research Design

Tidens Kvinder was launched in 1923. The magazine was a popular Danish magazine until 1945, when other magazines gradually took over its market share. Tidens Kvinder was, in its own words, initiated 'for women, to women, and mainly by women,' as the editorial explained in its 25-year anniversary issue in 1948. 36 It was primarily targeted wealthy, edu -cated women interested in art, politics, the home, sport, society, culture, law, and women's liberation. Later, middle-class women also joined as readers. 37 In  general, Tidens Kvinder spoke to the modern, confident woman who was equally engaged with international and domestic issues and always communicated with a sense of aesthetic and linguistic sur -plus. The magazine consistently focused on women's lives and opportunities, though this focus shifted slightly during the war years and the economic boom of the 1950s. While it continued to advocate for women's roles in society, academic and political articles decli - ned, and more entertainment content was introduced-novels, celebrity portraits, gossip, and spectacular stories from around the world. As a lifestyle magazine, Tidens Kvinder reflected societal developments and exemplified how popular media evolved from prima -rily text-based formats dominated by colour images and celebrity culture. The magazine ceased publication in 1969.

31 Christopher Reed, 'Taking Amusement Seriously: Modern Design in the Twenties,' in Designing the Modern Interior: From Victorian to Today , eds. Penny Sparke, Anne Massey, Trevor Keeble, and Brenda Martin (Berg, 2009), 79-93.

32 Rybczyński, Home , 1986.

33 Christopher Reed, ed., (Not) at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture (Thames & Hudson, 1999).

34 Tobias Faber, Dansk arkitektur (Arkitektens Forlag, 1977); Olaf Lind and Jonas Møller, Bag hækken: det danske parcelhus i lyst og nød , (Arkitektens Forlag, 1996).

35 See, among others, Tony Chapman, 'Ideal Homes?' in Social Change and Domestic Life , eds. Tony Chapman and Jenny Hockey (California Library, 2002); Sarah Feber, Chris Healy, and Chris Auliffe, eds., Beasts of Suburbia: Reinterpretating Cultures in Australian Suburbs (Melbourne University Press, 1994); and Silverstone, Television and Everyday Life .

36 Tidens Kvinder , 1943 (11).

37 Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Dansk Mediehistorie , Bind II: 1880-1960 (Samleren, 1997), 149-218..

## Archive Research and Analysis

Tidens Kvinder is not digitized and can only be accessed in hard copy at the Royal Danish Library. This means that all magazines were leafed through manually for this project. During this reading, all relevant material featuring themes of the home, housing, architec -ture,  or  interior  design  was  photographed  and  registered.  More  than  2,500  pages  of images, ads, and texts were photographed and organized into files based on year of pub -lication. The dataset was then screened and divided into different categories: representa -tions of specific housing types (type 1); different kinds of genres, such as home portraits, expert reviews, reader correspondence, housing features, and ads (type 2); and ideological discussions on new housing, interior design, and architecture, mostly drawn from edi -torials (type 3). These three categories were then subjected to media analysis involving visual representation, textual mediation, the scenographic setting of interiors and dome -stic objects, and cultural analysis of the material culture of the Scandinavian home. 38

## Pre-War: Hygge as Class Distinction

Historical Context

In 1930, it was the upper bourgeoisie's homes that set the standard. Although they repre -sented only a small portion of the Danish population, they were politically, economically, and culturally dominant. The upper bourgeoisie lived partly in older grand apartments in the city or in newer villas just outside the city, in areas with similarly large and expensive houses. 39 In the bourgeois home there were rooms for servants, kitchen assistants, and others who helped maintain the household. Generally, the middle class, who were still small in numbers and societal dominance, imitated the upper class in terms of family roles, interior decor, and the organization of everyday life. 40 This included outsourcing major household tasks like laundry and having formal living rooms that were used only for guests and not for daily life. As with the bourgeois notion of the lady of the house, the middle-class ideal was a stay-at-home-housewife. But contrary to the upper-class woman, the middleclass housewife was still responsible for childcare, cooking, and daily chores, and most families lived in 3-4.5-room city apartments with just enough space for a single maid in a small room-if it was not already occupied by older children. Only few middleclass families lived in brick houses, 41 smallholdings, or smaller homes. Workers and rural people lived in very cramped and unhealthy conditions. Most urban families lived in one or two-room apartments, and single people often had to rent a room. Families often slept in the same room, and not all homes had toilets. They had little opportunity for privacy or for appropriating one's home with personal stuff due to lack of resources and space. In general, private housing was reserved for the more affluent.

38 Lees-Maffei, 'The Production-Consumption-Mediation Paradigm'; Ben Highmore, 'Habitat's Scenographic Imagination,' Journal of Design History 30, no. 1 (2016): 33-48; See Marianne Gullestad, Kultur og Hverdagsliv (Universitetsforlaget Oslo, 1989); and Orvar Löfgren, 'Deconstructing Swedishness: Culture and Class in Modern Sweden,' in Anthropology at Home , ed. Anthony Jackson (Tavistock, 1987), 74-93.

39 Birgit Vorre, Boligen i det 20. århundrede (Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busk, 2008).

40 Vorre, Boligen , 56.

However, a growing social awareness had already begun to take root in Danish politics. As early as the 1920s, Danish housing policy began focusing on improving workers' hou -sing and introducing new housing types such as garden cities and apartment blocks. 42 In 1933, the state introduced the so-called building support laws, which made it possible to construct social housing blocks and private houses with state loans. With smaller chan -ges this continued up till 1956. 43 However, these new homes were criticized for being too expensive for working-class families. 44 At the same time, housing shortages-especially in cities-worsened.

## Mediatization of the Home during the 1930s

Targeting upper-class women, Tidens Kvinder favoured home portraits, where readers are invited into the dwellings of notable individuals, and pieces of expert advice on interior design. These are genres that mediate norms of homemaking throughout all decades of Tidens Kvinder . Up until after World War II, the magazine ran series such as Our Homes/ Beautiful Homes from the Copenhagen Area (1934), Cosiness in the Home (1934), Modern Homes/ We Talk Modern (1936-37),  and How Do They Live Themselves? (1943-46). In these home portraits, the reader is invited into the residences of the Danish upper class, nobility, highsociety families, as well as royalty, famous architects and celebrities-including internatio -nal figures, such as in a feature on Benito Mussolini's summer cottage.

An  example  is  a home  visit  to  Mr and Mrs Merchant Hubert Justesen. What stands out in these accounts is not only the visual staging of domestic space, but also the way these images operate as performative constructions of identity. The lady of the house (in the 1930s often referred to by her husband's profession and name), Mrs Merchant Hubert Justesen, is depicted standing before a fireplace (upper left), which is highlighted both for its aesthetic qualities and as an emblem of domestic warmth. In another picture, she is engaged in playing billiards. These images convey a narrative that dominates the home portraits in 1930s Tidens Kvinder : homes are not defined by hard housework and domestic VORE HJEM

41 In Danish 'Murmestervilla', which was a house built in bricks by a craftsman, not an architect as was the case with the upper-class villas. It was popular between 1910-1940, and for a short period after IIWW. See Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen, and Dorthe Bendtsen. Drømmen om eget hus. Statslånshuse 1933 - 1959. Strandberg Publishing: 2021

42 Hans Kristensen, Fire generationers boligdrømme (Polyteknisk Forlag, 2012).

43 Bendsen and Bendtsen, Drømmen om eget hus .

44 Vorre, Boligen .

Rum, Avis Vagge er

Vagtapper

ikke bot praktiske,

(Figure 2) Home portrait from the Our Homes series, a visit to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Grocer Hubert Justesen, 1934.

<!-- image -->

tasks; rather, they are portrayed as female domestic settings that reflect the woman's abi -lity to create beautiful, light-hearted, and socially inclusive spaces.

As Gillian Rose and others argue, images like these do not simply reflect reality; they actively construct meaning through visual regimes that shape how subjects and spaces are perceived. 45 These textual and visual representations of beauty, good taste, and har -monic interiors thus entail a staging of domesticity that aligns with distinct gendered and class-based ideals. As Orvar Löfgren points out, the interior-filled with luxury objects, arts, handcrafted furniture, and textiles-was a tool through which the bourgeois home was positioned 'not only vis-à-vis the old gentry but also vis-à-vis the common people.' 46 While such settings underscored a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere, they were also strongly culturally and socially exclusive.

Pictures and texts mainly presented representative rooms (e.g. living room, dining room, private library), and the reader is only very rarely shown the 'backstage' areas used by domestic staff or the private domains of the residents. This mediation of the home aligns with Erving Goffman's distinction between the public-social frontstage and the private, hidden backstage. 47 Images of the home's exterior are seldom included, unless the feature involves a specific story regarding, for example, a historical estate or an expansive garden.

45 Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials , 4th ed. (Sage, 2023).

46 Orvar Löfgren, 'Deconstructing Swedishness: Culture and Class in Modern Sweden,' in Anthropology at Home, ed. Anthony Jackson (Tavistock, 1987), 78.

47 Erving Goffman uses a theatrical metaphor to explain social behaviour. Frontstage is where indi -viduals perform roles for an audience, adhering to expected norms and managing impressions; for example at work, in public, or in media such as Tidens Kvinder . The backstage, in contrast, is a private space where people can drop their performance, relax, and behave in ways that might contradict

It is also uncommon for the articles to provide details such as the house's size, year of construction, or architectural style. The primary focus is the interior life of the home, with particular emphasis on the décor, which is presented in detail and with considerable knowledge of materials, design, provenance, and stylistic genre.

This classed and gendered notion of the home dominates the magazine in the 1930s and can be traced back to the first year of Tidens Kvinder , 1923, when readers were introduced to 'the lovely home' of office manager Sophus Clausen and his wife.

The arrangement of the home, in the choice of colours of wallpaper, upholstery, carpets, and all these things that make the home a harmo -nious home, one can feel the sure and discerning taste of the lady of the house. Beautiful old and modern lamps, wonderful porcelain, beautiful vases with lovely flowers, and finely coordinated handicrafts meet the eye everywhere in the rooms; there is this 'hygge' and beauty that only a woman's care can give to a home. 48

While this quote underscores a 'harmony' of colours, objects, and furniture-a setting that promoted hygge and a kind of 'beauty that only a woman can give a home'-it is also important to note that the home was ideally promoted as a site of amusement. The staging of the lady of the house engaged in an amusing activity, such as playing billiards, not only idealized a certain type of female personality, but also linked a specific attitude to the culture of the bourgeois home. In fact, throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, adjectives like 'humorous,' 'quirky,' and 'funny' are often used to describe the domestic atmos -phere of these class-oriented homes. 49 Achieving a beautiful and harmonious home filled with hygge was an ideological construction that not only presented a certain style of upperclass appropriation of the home, to use Lefebvre's expression, but also 'became an integral means of 'good taste'' and 'guaranteed admittance into a socioeconomic coterie.' 50

While the International Style-modernist design and architecture-was already gaining a dominant voice in public discourse both internationally and nationally, 51 it is remarkably absent in these home portraits. Tidens Kvinder did not entirely ignore new modern design and architecture, but in the 1930s the examples are few. One example is Blidah Park, an innovative park development with housing units in a large green field outside Copenha -gen, which was featured in several articles in the early 1930s. 52 Tidens Kvinder describes the estate in positive terms as a radical improvement of quality of residential life with 'good things like sun, air, forest, water, and beach,' and with modern comforts such as a water vejen, dent raffineret Herreværeise Denne Sydlejlighed har et sjai.

their public persona. Erving Goffmann, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (University of Edin -burgh Social Sciences Research Centre, 1959).

48 Vore Hjem, Tidens Kvinder , 3, (1923).

49 Reed, 'Taking Amusement Seriously'.

50 Anne Anderson, 'Harmony in the Home: Fashioning the 'Model' Artistic Home or Aesthetic House Beautiful through Color and Form,' Interiors 5, no. 3 (2014): 43.

51 Bech-Danielsen, Moderne Arkitektur .

52 See Tidens Kvinder 1934 (6, 13, 23, 44), 1935 (7) and 1937 (17).

en rand Kernap mod Syd, Avor

med

(ra der er Udsigt over Gresund

bygget

'estkarnappen

sammen ned den stor

og der er flere laste Stabe

closet, bath, and a state-of-the-art kitchen that the reader 'has to encounter for yourself rather than read about.' 53 derne, hygieniske avortil Strem leveres fra et Centralantag. Alt Der vil blive Valfart til Blidah i de kommen de Sondage, tor vi spaa. Men det er ogsaa for Gang. Kobenhavnerne saadann Boligforhold til san forboldsvis rimelige e Priser

fra Velens Mylder gemte sig i de parklig-

Maaske strejfedes Sindet if en Smule

nende Haver?

Misundelse, men kun et Ojebtik

· disse i

laer og Haver var jo alligevel ikke for almin.

stammede fra hi

fremmede Egne: Blidah,

Blidah.

og har betragtet det som

· Marielyst·

tet og generende Naboskab, gi til en Forfriskning, Det elektriske Maskinvaskeri ma aldrig

· med en Tanke og altid Is

i Kælderen vil vare sikker pas at gere Lykke.

saa beaver og moderne, som act she raa a

der vil gore Vasken til Legeværk.

Lejligheden ligger pae Hjorad

med Udsigt

Strandvejen og Maglemose

progtfuld

over bresan

Sommerer

Alten

r en ideal Spisekrog og foreg

Parkbebyggelsen Blidah, der som

mee den carste skaniac

il 12 Millioner Kroner. Det er ikke Smaapeng

kendt som den, der for ca. 3 Aar siden efter a

In general, the magazine acknowledges the need for better housing solutions for lowerincome groups, but it is sceptical of modern, mass-produced architecture and design even though modern, mass-produced architecture and design was built on the ideology of affordability and social improvement. 54 de store Lejligheder typer og en Mangde Illustrationer. Denne Bog, der er udkommet i Boghandelen, er omtrent udsolgt, men endnu kan der erhverves enkelte Eksemplarer.

mkring og langs Kvarteret, men Træerne og

Plenerne fra de gamle Haver er i vites

muligt Omfang bibeholdt, og Navnet Blidah

Parkbebyngelse,

lekker som ved en Fallesbetegnelse hele del

laer, som for var forbeholdt enkelte Rigmæend.

aflest de faa Vil

Blidah er soret for sie setv. Alle de le

ligheder, Bebyggelsen rummer,

forstaas. 1 Forbindelse med Beliggenheden.

med en Komfort, der mas ser

ol, Luft, Skov, Vand og Strand uden alt fol

Fugieperspektivisk Togning af Parkbe-

byggelsen ·Blidah- Instead, the magazine focuses on architecture that was unique rather than copyable, built by famous architects rather than replicable, and handcrafted rather than industrially pro -duced. The key scepticism was built on a preference for more complex, individual, and playful forms of homemaking and personal appropriation than what was promoted in modern architectural presentations like Blidah Park. As Christopher Reed suggests in his study of the Amusement Style, the ideology behind the kind of homes that are promoted in Tidens Kvinder is a cultural opposition to the discourse of rationality and the modern lines of the International Style: amusement was not only an interior style of the bourgeoi -sie but a way of living. 55

Figure 3. Blidah Park, a park estate, was portrayed in several articles in the early 1930s as an example of modern housing architecture.

<!-- image -->

This class-distinctive notion of appropriating a dwelling is clearly mediated in the series How Should We Decorate Our Homes? (1923-46) where female readers could write in and receive specific advice for a fee. The tone of the responses is strongly authoritative, spoken

53 'Moderne Parkbebyggelse Blidah Park,' Tidens Kvinder , 6 (1934).

54 'Moderne Parkbebyggelse Blidah Park,' Tidens Kvinder .

55 Reed, 'Taking Amusement Seriously'.

kke. Alle Blokkene ligger frit og dejligt i de bo i saadanne Omgivelser. Og Bebyggelsens Ter Demar Lejigheden vore Billeder ses Installationen af de Maskiner.

MODERNE PARKBEBYGGELSE

„BLIDAH"

from a point of view in which interior design is seen as part of the social formation of the lady of the house. An example is this response to Ms Amalie, who is concerned about her living room:

You do not have to change the beautiful wall colour; it is perfect for moss green velour furniture. Sheer curtains of voile or tulle in a warm terracotta colour will look lovely here, and the question whether the cur -tains are not very opaque for the long, low window can be solved with low bin curtains for the lower third of the window. 56

The answers are highly specific, often implicit, and require a deep knowledge of fabric, style, colours, and where to buy them. This suggests that while all readers of Tidens Kvinder had access to expert advice, in practice, it was only written for the included few: the bourgeois ladies with knowledge, resources, and know-how.

However, modern housing and design did squeeze into the existing home culture of Tidens Kvinder , albeit in a very subtle way. In this expert answer, the 'long, low window' raises new questions about demarcation practices. Ribbon windows, as they are called, are one of Le Corbusier's five features in his seminal manifesto for modern architecture, 57 and during the 1930s, they were integrated into developments such as Blidah Park. The idea behind ribbon windows was to ensure access to daylight. 58

Another example is Mr and Mrs Merchant Hubert Justesen's villa in northern Copenha -gen, described as 'modern in its interior, but in no way funkis '-a Scandinavian synonym for the early modern bungalows introduced in the 1920s and 1930s. 59 While recognizing 'modern needs for daylight and air,' the windows in the villa 'are not long and low,' which, according to the portrait, is good as such windows prevent 'insurmountable dif -ficulties' when cleaning. 60 Similarly, in a feature entitled Hygge in the Home (1935), modern urban housing architecture is criticized for 'those long windows' and its 'unbroken sur -face' which, compared to the old, ornamented façades of historical buildings, can accom -modate 'standard apartments' designed according to the principles of mass housing. 61

In  general, Tidens  Kvinder negotiated  new  modern  design  and  architectural  trends through a dynamic process of pros and cons based on practical considerations and inte -gration with traditional interiors centred on the notion of hygge. While resembling Reed's description of the Amusement Style, 62 hygge is not only a specific decorative ideal. Accor -ding to Jeppe Linnet, it is a spatial-emotional management tool: its purpose is to create an inclusive atmosphere based on a (construction of) social cohesion and inclusion. 63 Thus, interior style and beauty are based on attitudes, understandings of materials, and perso -nal appropriation. As such, hygge becomes an indicator of an appropriation strategy that both confirms social class as well as the importance of the home. As stated in another home portrait, the furniture and interior are praised for their ability to adapt to the new modern 'practical' style without being drawn into the supposed 'artistic and practical necessity' that risks turning homes into laboratories (1934):

56 'Hvorledes indretter vi vores Hjem?' Tidens Kvinder 1 (1934): 33.

57 'Le Corbusier's 5 Points of Architecture | A Complete Guide.' March 23, 2023. https://archeetect. com/5-points-of-architecture/.

58 Faber, Dansk arkitektur .

59 Tidens Kvinder , 1934, 32.

60 Tidens Kvinder , 1934, 32.

61 'Hygge i Hjemmet,' Tidens Kvinder 10 (1935).

62 Reed, 'Taking Amusement Seriously'.

The furniture is not only practical, but also beautiful and comfortable, so that one can really enjoy oneself in it. It is one of the kinds of homes that some part of the bourgeoisie continues to furnish, no matter how much they hear about the 'artistic and practical necessity' of furnishing their dwelling, so cold and simple that it resembles a laboratory more than a home. 64

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the magazine maintained an ongoing discussion about the perfect balance between the practical and hygge, suggesting that modern architecture and design not only prevent hygge but pose a direct threat to it. This discussion resulted in a more conscious and explicit definition of the ideal home and a clearer critique of the aspects of modern architecture that were counterproductive to the concept of home pro -moted by the journal. The International Style was not only 'waged within the bourgeoi -sie, with verbal and visual rhetorics of rationality,' but also brought cultural changes that slowly transformed one of the core pillars of bourgeois culture-the home-by opening it to new designs and functions, new practices, and, eventually, to the lower middle class.

## Homemaking as a Societal Necessity

## The Historical Context during Wartime

The 1940s were dominated by World War II and its aftermath. The end of the war brought a (global) baby boom, and families moved to cities due to the mechanization of agriculture, and the rise of new urbanized job functions. Cities needed labour, but there were only limited access to housing, and in 1945, Copenhagen faced a shortage of 125,000 homes. 65 The government prioritized helping families, and in 1940s and 1950s it was mandated that in order to be assigned housing in Copenhagen or other major Danish cities, one had to be married and have a child or be expecting one. 66

Architectural and housing policy initiatives did not stand still. In 1947 , Denmark establis -hed its first Ministry of Housing. Around the same time, the Danish Building Research Institute (SBi) was founded to develop knowledge on how to best design future hou -sing and cities. This led to the implementing of national housing research projects and architectural competitions on housing types and building standardization. 67 Post-war was a period of re-stabilizing and recovery after five years of chaos and shortage, and housing played a vital role, also in Tidens Kvinder .

63 Jeppe T. Linnet, 'Money Can't Buy Me Hygge,' Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 55, no. 2 (2011), 21-44.

64 'Vore Hjem,' Tidens Kvinder 32 (1934).

65 Vorre, Boligen , 153.

66 Kristensen, Fire generationers boligdrømme .

## The Mediazation of Homemaking during Wartime

As a response to national insecurity and anxiety, Tidens Kvinder took efforts to promote the moral meaning of homemaking by reinforcing the ideal of the bourgeois dwelling for its ability to provide comfort and create a sense of safety and social unity. Thus, the class distinction strategy for appropriation of the home was now redefined as a national defence strategy for core Danish values. A 1942 editorial read:

Heavy and fateful events have shaken the world and left their mark on all minds, and it is more important than ever to find means to dispel the dark thoughts and to restore peace and the joy that we all need. Time has meant that home has once again become the family place, and the home is therefore [where] the members of the family seek peace and rest after the day's work. Here is where we should find the quiet calm, the comfortable cosiness that soothes the frayed nerves and spreads joy throughout life. 68

Focus was placed on housewives' trials and tribulations with supply shortages and economic challenges. Advice on decoration was mainly centred on chores in the home that did not require (big) new purchases, such as creative table settings, flower decorations, crafts like embroidery, and recycling of textiles, but these were presented as important tasks in securing the comfort of the nation. Home portraits were accompanied by a national hymn and visits to historical Danish mansions, as well as domestic folklore.

However, the war (re)established an explicit gendered coding that had been more implied for  years.  The  magazine  emphasised  women's  high  moral  standards  and  their  social engagement in contributing to the well-being not only of each family member but of the entire nation. In the post-war editorial from 1946, housewives' duties during the war were compared to men's achievements in the resistance movement because they-the brave housewives-were able to 'maintain the home and provide a safe haven for husbands and children, during the years […] when the disasters of the war primarily affected the homes and the attitudes of the individual.' 69 Home was synonymous with a social and emotional microcosm within the greater macrocosm. 70

67 Bendsen and Bendtsen, Drømmen .

68 'Har deres Stuer den rette Atmosfære?' Tidens Kvinder 6 (1942): 3.

69 'Husmødre i alle lande. Foren Eder!' , Tidens Kvinder 25 (1946): 3.

70 Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias ; Elizabeth Hooper-Lane, 'House Beautiful's 'Victory Home' as Propaganda Tool,' Home Cultures 9, no. 1 (2012): 5-34.

Wartime intensified the existing housing shortage in most modern Western countries, and Tidens Kvinder took an active part in rebuilding the future. Uncommon for the magazine, features on the poor housing conditions and living standard of deprived citizens found their way to its pages during and after the war. The social condition of lower-income groups, single mothers, and older people poured into the magazine and created fertile ground for housing as a social phenomenon led by the (female) elite through Tidens Kvinder . An article in 1945 states that it is 'of paramount importance for people to have a home, a place where they can relax after work and where they can gather with their family,' even though the dwelling may be very small. 71 Similarly, in 1946, Ingrid Koch of the Danish Women's Society wrote that it is 'extremely degrading' for a society to leave families with children without proper housing conditions and access to light and air, and calls for political action that values 'human dwellings […] more than roads and bridges.' 72

The postwar home in Tidens Kvinder was still subject to a strategy for appropriation. Howe -ver, compared to earlier cases, the mediated home slowly became a symbol of a better future rather than a negotiation with the past and a resistance to the practical dwelling and International Style unfit for hygge. 73 Tidens Kvinder began embracing small modern apartments, ribbon windows, steel furniture, practical design, and new appliances and technology as features of a modern lifestyle as their readers from middle class families increased in numbers.

As in the early phase of female empowerment of Tidens Kvinder , the magazine investigated women's possibilities and roles in building up the welfare state based on knowledge, poli -tical discussion, and academic reports. Tidens Kvinder helped mediate women's role in soci -ety by promoting a general modern Western discourse of the home as a representation of a modern, democratic society for which women were responsible. 74 The kitchen, in parti -cular, became synonymous with women's access to modernization. The political impor -tance of the kitchen was discussed in several articles on the socio-economic problems caused by the lack of paid housekeepers for housewives, and during 1948 the magazine hosted an ongoing correspondence between 'Danish housewives' and the Minister of Internal Affairs (later Prime Minister) Jens Otto Kragh on political matters, household work, and supply shortages. Studies on Swedish kitchen practices were paraphrased, 75 and a national analysis of formal and informal work in the welfare state led the magazine to call the Danish kitchen 'Denmark's largest workplace,' as it undisputedly took up the most working hours per week compared to other work functions in society. 76

Women were now increasingly identified with the more class-neutral and international label 'housewife,' and the title 'lady of the house' disappeared, as did the posture of the bourgeois lady engaged in light-hearted activities like playing billiards (see earlier). Most home portraits and design features now positioned women in their 'modern habitat,' the kitchen, often wearing an apron to signal that being a housewife with an apron, was both personally fulfilling and socially meaningful. Magazines like Tidens Kvinder thus invited readers into what had previously been hidden from the public eye-the backstage kit -chen-while simultaneously replacing the bourgeois image of the lady of the home with the modern working woman, portrayed as equally free and authentic, although still posi -tioned in settings that mirrored her identity and social standing. 77

71 Paul Sarauw, 'Uden tag over hovedet,' Tidens Kvinder 1 (1945): 3.

72 Ingrid Koch, Editorial, Tidens Kvinder 26 (1946): 3.

73 See also Hooper-Lane, 'House Beautiful's 'Victory Home,'' 2012.

74 Giles, The Parlour .

75 See 'Familieliv og hjemmearbejde i Sverige,' Tidens Kvinder 5 (1949).

76 'Danmarks største arbejdsplads,' Tidens Kvinder 9 (1952).

SEV on man kun tanker ad adulklinges indentor

det sterste erhvery —

sidst menneskealdre, bar adviklinzen varret canemi

Ch mangde at de arbejder, der for ikke

boldning på landet: at brysse

sance dr siden berte ind under co leva

bred, stobe tys, koge sate, spinde

kere or fabrikker på landet.

to) lil latelen, er overtaget af handwaer

trisk lys og så videre; man kanse bive ved at remse

et naturliet led i den daglice hastereise i by oz på land.

alle de mange forbedringer op.

Men stir om

14

Figure 4. Feature on how the kitchen - and the identity of the housewife - changed over several decades (1950).

<!-- image -->

This narrative was promoted in several articles where the magazine visited housewives all over the world, from our Swedish neighbours to an English lady lord and Asian workers, or compared old kitchens with new, shining, functional, state-of-the-art settings. Being a housewife was portrayed as liberating and empowering, and the home was presented as a modern and fulfilling workplace 78 -a narrative that grew stronger in the 1950s with economic growth, mass housing, and new technology. This development also meant that more and more ads found their way onto the pages, adding new choices to the material culture of the home. 79

Between  1950  and  1953,  the  magazine  ran  a  column  called  'Køkkenet'  (The  Kichen), launching new kitchen designs, appliances, and advice for housewives. The authoritative voice and direct instructions that had characterized the first decades up to the mid-1940s, symbolized by 'Hvorledes indretter vi vore Hjem?' (How Do We Decorate Our Homes)

77 Highmore, 'Habitat's Scenographic Imagination'.

78 This depiction of a liberating modern home was later criticized by second-wave feminism, such as American writer Betty Friedan, who described these new modern homes as 'comfortable concen -tra- tion camps for women,' in her influential work The Feminine Mystique , first published in 1963. (Penguin Classics, 2010).

79 Giles, The Parlour .

(see earlier), were now replaced by an informative and broad dissemination of many dif -ferent styles and interior design trends. This shift was also evident when the magazine, in 1952, launched a new series, 'Hjemmet i dag' (Today' s Home), which, until 1958, introduced readers to the latest in interior design. In the second issue of the series, the authors, Birte and Niels Rohweder, set the tone for the understanding of home that characterized the format:

First of all, one has to know that a home […] is not something one can go and buy ready-made. Only when the rooms have been used and have been shaped by the personality of the residents can one say it has become a home. 80

While recognizing the appeal of an individualized consumer culture with multiple products and styles, the magazine took great interest in continuing to inform readers and promote the idea that the home had little to do with specific objects and everything to do with the ability to 'make the home a harmonious home.' 81 Nor did it reflect a version of modernist culture as purely practical or rational (although it acknowledged the hard work of  the  housewife).  On  the  contrary,  the  magazine  constantly  mediated  the  social  and emotional aspects of interiors as a mode of withdrawal from the alienating conditions of modernization. 82 Appropriation was still anchored in the private home of the caring housewife. An example comes from a review of one of the first collective social housing estates built in Denmark, Høje Søborg Kollektivhus in Søborg, which Tidens Kvinder had highly anticipated as an example of an innovative solution for single mothers. The journa -list was generally very positive about the many shared meals and shared functions, yet concluded:

I cannot help but think about how impersonal this type of home seems. Sure to be called old-fashioned, I would still prefer the individual home with its difficulties to the collective practicality. 83

Hygge is still a core proof of appropriation, sheltering the family from what Jeppe Linnet calls the social and mental alienation of mass consumption and capitalism: 'a discourse that not only approves of certain ways of being together as genuine and real, but also points a critical finger' at 'cold, market-like relations.' 84 The modern home is 'planned to meet the needs of many, outfitted with the most up-to-date equipment and furnished to foster quality family life.' 85

This also ties back to the initial editorial 'Cosiness and Culture of the Home' introduced at the start of this article. 86 If happy homes are equivalent to a happy society, then the new consumer needs to focus on the social-emotional aspects of creating (new) environments, H VOR er det prat« har kg tit tankt, når jeg korte ud ad Strandvejen og passerede et lanet. lavt hus som er bygget syd for del camilo horte, at arkitekt Mogens Hammer skulle have bygget sidan et nydeligt hus mite cen sist For at l en de be ovet adel er lae seo lin ende ben il beti e des opt ni sakkelarred. si de fir larredets struktur på siden ind mod stuen. Mens vicerene endnu var blode 1 betoco, har tammich pa overmaden, som soca ci fodaftryk uden foe premierebiografen i Hollywood på en blevet vag i forstuen, lavet aftryk af deres hander, det er ideen med film- et murene hvide, travarket omkring vinduerne sortbrunt, tag- ning mg hg ning renderne bt oz de tynde stolner. som barer tapet ved indeanesdarene, menie- rode.

80 Birthe and Niels Rohweder, 'Hjemmet i dag,' Tidens Kvinder 2 (1952).

81 See earlier quote from 1923, Tidens Kvinder .

82 Linnet, 'Money Can't Buy Me Hygge'.

83 'Praktisk er det at bo i et kollektivhus,' Tidens Kvinder 41 (1951).

84 Linnet, 'Money Can't Buy Me Hygge,' 29.

85 Hooper-Lane, 'House Beautiful's 'Victory Lane,'' 25.

86 Haslund, 'Hygge og Boligkultur,' 3.

ost og solens lys og varme mod vest.

Ved husets plan har man arbejdet på at udaytte udsigten over vandet mod

nem huset pl tvars. Beroenes

rer en firkant af i den nordostlige del af stuen. Foraldrenes sovevrelse er

askilt ira stucn medien halvhal vaR Ovet WaRio ct dct Ras AVuKCL ZIYCI

tornemmelsen at en storre stuc, fortsat ind a sovevacreisct

Buset. Det muligger en okonomisk installation. Galet

Ning tin bovet ( 0. g)

skakande gule misch, rester ar dem, okt prusi ta vocos taans cosaks,

TH Leire: Grandyler oner der Large bas red Oresed.

iridipladice en der ce let neg, maler segired.

en bel

slat aulenet et att olde o maed et levene, marger. Pl doe sime lem drea

E MILLAIARBULRA, SMETSE, UCE ACHLACE MUE BES SWANS

asvrg ud mod vandet. Dit er ikke koldt, selv nil det stormer, for der er

te se niss t sile vindurt. Kolerine arnuk ulc knoch

og har en smuk, gylden tone, der gentages E

den banale »broncer-farvede, men en lettere tone. 1 forstuen hwiler loftsbrad

Figure 5. Home portrait of a new double villa near the strait outside Copenhagen, where the author emphasises that private homeownership has become the most dominant housing ideal (1955).

<!-- image -->

where 'humans are in harmony with themselves and their surroundings.' And, as the motto goes, throughout three decades of meditations on the home in Tidens Kvinder , this is not something one can buy; it is not a purchase, but a socio-emotional skill that needs to be continuously cared for and maintained. 87 Hygge is 'of crucial value, which one [must] mutually own and […] defend.' 88

By 1960, the ideal home had become a privately owned single-family house, where dif -ferent members' needs could be fulfilled in different rooms, with different objects and facilities-all  orchestrated  and  supervised  by  the  ever-present,  highly  competent,  and well-organized housewife: 'Many families dream of becoming homeowners. It is the desire to be able to decide on one's own surroundings and get away from the stone bridge [Danish term for a harsh, urban space] that prevails […].' 89

## Conclusion

Analysing the mediatization of home in Tidens Kvinder through the theoretical lens of Henri Lefebvre's spatial triad reveals a nuanced cultural struggle between domination and appropriation in mid-twentieth century Danish domestic life. In this framework, con -

87 Carolyn F. Curasi, Linda L. Price, and Eric J. Arnould, 'How Individuals' Cherished Possessions Become Families' Inalienable Wealth,' Journal of Consumer Research 31, no. 3 (2004): 609-22.

88 Haslund, 'Hygge og Boligkultur,' 3.

89 Birte Rohweder, 'Med sundet som Genbo,' Tidens Kvinder 9 (1955): 18-19.

farvevalget runde i huser. Ekke erende for rummets farver, ogsl ved billedvalget. Det er igen de gyldne, sup or dæmpet koralrade toner. som skaber variation. Kun hist og her er der lidt pleret med en dyb bligren, som er fremherskende. S1 er der enkelte lysgreane st helt rike snyd Son cil nece t moctine bolinercnin.

De brine he mod sce i blgne, ce sena overlang n bland)

relse er heller byggeligt. Her hanger ogsl en fin silkefane. Der

strl-agtigt tapet med enkelte guldstrejf i. Her, hvoe det passer, er de

ene seng stir i en niche, hvor bagvaggen er

tapetseret med et morsomt japansk

meget

fint i virkningen. Det er ellers noret man ma bruse med forsistiehed. Kek ceived space-associated with planners, architects, and ideological frameworks-seeks to impose order, rationality, and coherence onto material environments. In contrast, lived space, grounded in the everyday practices, emotions, and symbolisms of inhabitants as promoted in Tidens Kvinder , offers a site for strategic appropriation, where users are told to infuse their homes with beauty and personal meaning and to resist imposed orders.

We have identified a development in understandings of mediation of the home across three phases in Tidens Kvinder . The first phase, 1930s, centres on a classical conception of home as a bourgeois space for negotiating modern architecture and design, primarily on an aesthetic level. This is followed by an expanded notion of home as a civic project related to the war. Finally, in late 1950s, the concept of lifestyle dwelling is introduced, describing how modern architecture and design is treated within the context of indivi -dualism, consumer culture, and rapid suburbanization.

The editorial strategies of Tidens Kvinder thus reveal the ideological underpinnings of domestic representation. While seemingly focused on lifestyle and taste, the magazine orchestrated a complex negotiation between new architectural paradigms and older cul -tural values, between domination of a new conceived space of modernity and the tradi -tion of a bourgeois home culture. Through visual imagery, advice columns, and reader correspondence, it performed what Roger Silverstone describes as 'double articulation': 90 mediating not only material space but also the symbolic structures through which homes were understood and inhabited in a period of change.

Walter Benjamin's image of the bourgeois home as a 'box in the theatre of the world' remains central to  understanding the ideological  work  performed by Tidens Kvinder . 91 Even  as  the  magazine  responded  to  modernist  critiques  of  sentimentality  and  orna -mentation-seen in Le Corbusier's call for the 'machine for living' 92 -it insisted on the home's emotional, symbolic, and atmospheric dimensions. Rather than outright rejecting the new rationalized dwellings of the welfare state, the magazine advocated for their emotional  domestication  through  symbolic  gestures,  intimate  routines,  and  aesthetic personalization. In this way, hygge operated as a tool for reclaiming the private space from abstraction and impersonal design, allowing middle-class women to assert agency and cultural continuity in the face of modernization and spatial standardization. Thus, the persistent emphasis on hygge as both a practice and a normative value can be read as a cultural mechanism of appropriation according to Lefebvre. The magazine suggested that through hygge , homemakers could assert lived space against the abstraction of planned environments of rationality, functionalism, and effectiveness. In articles, home portraits, and expert advice, Tidens Kvinder appropriated ribbon windows, open-plan kitchens, and collective housing concepts not as endpoints of modernity, but as raw material to be softe -ned, aestheticized, and re-imbued with meaning.

Moreover, this spatial negotiation was not merely aesthetic but deeply political. As Tidens Kvinder moved from pre-war elite home mediatization to post-war advocacy for modern housing and technological inclusion, it reshaped the role of women from ladies of the house to active participants in the national reconstruction. The female-coded domain of homemaking thus became a site of political engagement, where spatial practices contri -buted to the formation of civic values and collective identities. The picture of the proud housewife in her modernized kitchen was an emblem of women's modern enlighten -ment.

90 Silverstone, Television and Everyday Life .

91 Benjamin, 'Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,' 155.

92 Le Corbusier, 'Purism'.

In sum, Tidens Kvinder exemplifies how popular media can both mediate and materialize cultural struggles over space. Through its engagement with architectural discourse, design trends, and domestic aesthetics, this article has shown how modern notions of pri -vacy is not only related to the invention of modern communication. In fact, popular maga -zines, like Tidens Kvinder, operate as cultural intermediaries between structural forces of spatial domination and the lived tactics of appropriation. By embedding hygge at the core of its vision of the modern privacy, the magazine provided a repertoire of practices that enabled readers to transform anonymous, rationalized spaces into emotionally resonant, personally meaningful places. Hygge served not only as a style of domestic decoration but as a technique of emotional governance-a form of spatial and social ordering that helped maintain continuity with earlier bourgeois ideals on home and privacy while legi -timizing new suburban and welfare-state realities. This transformation reveals not only the resilience of tradition in the face of modernity but also the capacity of media to shape, negotiate, and authorize new forms of everyday life. In Tidens Kvinder home is both a private space that needs to be protected from the potential alienation of new architecture and design, but also a scene on which new architecture and design can be appropriated.

## Declaration

This paper is funded by the Danish Augustinus Foundation.

## References

- Anderson, Anne. 'Harmony in the Home: Fashioning the 'Model' Artistic Home or Aes -thetic  House  Beautiful  through  Color  and  Form.' Interiors 5, no. 3. 2014, 341-60. https://doi.org/10.2752/204191114X14126916211265.
- Bech-Danielsen, Claus. Moderne arkitektur - hva' er meningen? København: Systime, 2004.
- Benjamin, Walter. 'Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century.' In Reflections , translated by Edmund Jephcott. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.
- Benjamin, Walter. 'Erfarung und Armut.' In Gesammelte Schriften ,  vol.  2,  part  1.  Suhr -kamp Verlag, 1977, 217-218.
- Berker, Thomas, Maren Hartmann, Yves Punie, and Katie Ward. Domestication of Media and Technology . McGraw-Hill Education, 2005.
- Bendsen, Jannie Rosenberg and Dorthe Bendtsen. Drømmen om eget hus. Statslånshuse 1933 - 1959 . Strandberg Publishing, 2021.
- Berman, Marshall. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity . Berg, 1986.
- Bruun, Mette B. 'Towards an Approach to Early Modern Privacy: The Retirement of the Great Condé.' In Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches ,  edited by Michael Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, and Mette Birkedal Bruun. Brill, 2022, 12-59. https://doi. org/10.1163/9789004153073\_002m.
- Chapman, Tony. 'Ideal Homes?' In Social Change and Domestic Life , edited by Tony Chap -man and Jenny Hockey. California Library, 2002.
- Curasi, Carolyn Folkman, Linda L. Price, and Eric J. Arnould. 'How Individuals' Cheris -hed Possessions Become Families' Inalienable Wealth.' Journal of Consumer Research 31, no. 3 (2004): 609-22.
- Faber, Tobias. Dansk arkitektur . Arkitektens Forlag, 1977 .
- Feber, Sarah, Chris Healy, and Chris Auliffe, eds. Beasts of Suburbia: Reinterpreting Cultures in Australian Suburbs . Melbourne University Press, 1994.
- Fishman, Robert. Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia . Basic Books, 1987 .
- Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique . (Org. 1963), Modern Classics. Penguin Classics, 2010.
- Giddens, Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies . Polity Press, 1992.
- Giles,  Judy. The  Parlour  and  the  Suburb:  Domesticity,  Identification,  Class,  Femininity,  and Modernity . Berg Publishers, 2004.
- Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life . University of Edinburgh Social Sciences Research Centre, 1959.
- Gullestad, Marianne. Kultur og hverdagsliv . Universitetsforlaget, 1989.
- Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art & Theory, 1900-1990 . Blackwell, 1992.
- Highmore, Ben. 'Habitat's Scenographic Imagination.' Journal of Design History 30, no. 1 (2026): 33-48.
- Haslund, Ole. 'Hygge and Boligkultur.' Tidens Kvinder (2) 1952, 3.
- Jensen, Klaus Bruhn. Dansk mediehistorie . Vol. 2, 1880-1960. Samleren, 1997 .
- Hooper-Lane, Elizabeth. 'House Beautiful's 'Victory Home' as Propaganda Tool.' Home Cultures 9, no. 1, 2012, 5-34. https://doi.org/10.2752/175174212X13202276383733.
- Koch, Ingrid. Editorial. Tidens Kvinder 1946, no. 26: 3.
- Kristensen, Hans. Fire generationers boligdrømme . Polyteknisk Forlag, 2012.

- Lees-Maffei,  Grace.  'The  Production-Consumption-Mediation  Paradigm.' Journal  of Design History 22, no. 4 (2009): 351-76.
- Lefebvre, Henri. The production of space (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Blackwell, 1991.
- Lind, Olaf, and Jonas Møller. Bag hækken: Det danske parcelhus i lyst og nød .  Arkitektens Forlag, 1996.
- Linnet, Jeppe Trolle. 'Money Can't Buy Me Hygge: Danish Middle-Class Consumption, Egalitarianism,  and  the  Sanctity  of  Inner  Space.' Social  Analysis:  The  International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 55, no. 2, 2011, 21-44. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/23182166.
- Livingstone, Sonja. 'On the Material and the Symbolic: Silverstone's Double Articulation of Research Traditions in New Media Studies.' New Media & Society 9, no. 1, 2007 , 16-24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444807075200.
- Löfgren, Orvar. 'Deconstructing Swedishness: Culture and Class in Modern Sweden.' In Anthropology at Home , edited by Anthony Jackson. Tavistock, 1987 , 74-93.
- Nørgaard,  Lars  Cyril.  'Past  Privacy.'  In Early  Modern  Privacy:  Sources  and  Approaches , edited by Michael Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, and Mette Birkedal Bruun. Brill, 2022, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004153073\_002m.
- McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
- . MIT Press, 1994.
- Nygaard, Erik. Tag over hovedet - dansk boligbyggeri fra 1945 til 1982 .  Arkitektens Forlag, 1984.
- Reed, Christopher, ed. (Not)  at  Home:  The  Suppression  of  Domesticity  in  Modern  Art  and Architecture . Thames & Hudson, 1999.
- Reed, Christopher. 'Taking Amusement Seriously: Modern Design in the Twenties.' In Designing the Modern Interior: From Victorian to Today , edited by Penny Sparke, Anne Massey, Trevor Keeble, and Brenda Martin, 79-93. Berg, 2009.
- Rose, Gillian. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials . 4th ed. Sage, 2023.
- Rohweder, Birthe. 'Med sundet som genbo.' Tidens Kvinder (9) 1955, 18-19.
- Rybczyński, Witold. Home: A Short History of an Idea . Pocket Books, 1986.
- Sarauw, Paul. 'Uden tag over hovedet.' Tidens Kvinder (1) 1945, 3.
- Soja, Edward. W. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places . Black -well, 1996.
- Silverstone, Roger. Television and Everyday Life . Routledge, 1994.
- Stone, Lawrence. Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 . New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Unknown 'Praktisk er det at bo i et kollektivhus.' Tidens Kvinder (41) 1951, no pagenum -ber.
- Tidens Kvinder. Damernes Illustrerede Ugeblad (Today's Women. Ladies' Illustrated Weekly) . The Royal Library Archive. Various issues: 1923 (1-3), 1925 (1-3), 1927 (1-3), 1929 (1-3), 1930-1960 (1-52), 1961 (1-3), 1963 (1-3), 1965 (1-3).
- Vorre, Birgit: Boligen i det 20. århundrede . Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busk, 2008.

## Website

- Architeect. 'Le Corbusier's 5 Points of Architecture | A Complete Guide.' March 23, 2023. https://archeetect.com/5-points-of-architecture/.

## Figures, credits*

1. Frontpage, Tidens Kvinder, (38) 1936, 1
2. Unkown, 'Hr og Fru Grosser Hubert Justensen.' Vore Hjem, Tidens Kvinder (32) 1934, 7-8
3. Unknown, 'Moderne Parkbebyggelse Blidah Park.' Tidens Kvinder (6) 1934, (6), no pagenumbers
4. Unknown, 'Husmoderen dengang og nu.' Tidens Kvinder (36) 1950,14-15.
5. Birte Rohweder (text), John Jørgensen (photos). 'Med sundet som genbo,' Tidens Kvinder (9) 1955, 18-19.
* All visualizations and reproductions of material from Tidens Kvinder included herein are provided in accordance with Danish citation law, cf. the Copyright Act §23, which permits such use in connection with scholarly texts and provided that it is not for commercial purposes. See p. 131; https://www.ubva.dk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ ophavsret-for-begyndere-4udgave.p