Until a few years ago, Helen Russell was leading a seemingly happy life in London, working

as an editor for the Fashion Magazine Marie Claire.

True, she did feel restless at times.

Also true, she and her husband had been struggling with fertility treatments.

That said, she had no intention of leaving the UK.

Until out of the blue one wet Wednesday, my husband came home and told me he'd been offered

his dream job working for Lego in Denmark.

And we knew nothing about the country as many people in other countries are fairly ignorant

of Scandinavia.

We couldn't really have pinpointed it on a map.

They decided to go for it.

But as soon as they arrived in a small town in the rural hinterlands of Denmark, in the

dead of winter, she had regrets.

My husband left to go to work at 7.30am.

I didn't know anyone.

I didn't speak the language.

I was in this freezing cold dark country all by myself.

I did a lot of howling at the moon thinking I'd made the biggest mistake ever and I did

a lot of eating Danish pastries because as a repressed Brit, I liked to eat my emotions.

But Russell had heard, as you may have heard, that Denmark is routinely at or near the very

top of the annual happiness ranking compiled by the United Nations.

The other Nordic countries, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland pretty much dominate the

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