When I’m admiring the last noontime of this year, I know well that the sun won’t rise tomorrow. But even so, I think of it with disbelief—the same feeling I had more than a decade ago, when I saw the polar night for the first time.
In winter, navigating many places in Samiland is childishly simple: as long as you’re going uphill, keep going. Provided, of course, that you have snowshoes because without them there’s no chance of getting anywhere off a paved road; in that case, you can only stay at the foot of the hill, slowly sinking up to your waist in snow, and look up at the summit until your toes get too cold. When you run out of uphill, you’re at the top. Then you can fall into the snow, stretch out your snowshoed feet, settle in, pour yourself a hot drink from your thermos, and admire the view.
The sun barely gets above the horizon. It is morning, midday, and the afternoon, all at once. Everything lasts just a moment—so brief that, even though it’s negative 25 degrees Celsius, you don’t have time to freeze when you’re outside experiencing it, even if you’re lying in a snowdrift. It’s there for just a moment and then the whole show is over, too short for its significance and the change it brings. It would seem like the weeks-long night should come in with a bang.
Being used to a sunrise and sunset every day is very “equator-centric.” A different angle—to be precise, the angle of 67°24’ (just a little south of the Arctic Circle)—allows you to see that the things we at lower latitudes call morning, midday, and afternoon, evade definition in the north. In fact, even the position of the northern polar circle is changeable, and constantly shifting to the north. What’s more, contrary to popular opinion, the area where polar night occurs doesn’t begin exactly at the Arctic Circle, but almost one degree higher. At the same time, the area of polar day covers two more degrees of north latitude because, for a certain time of the year, night doesn’t fall for one degree below the circle. If the Earth didn’t have an atmosphere, the boundaries of these two areas would run precisely along the Arctic Circle, but because the sun’s rays are bent by a process called atmospheric refraction, we observe an apparent shift of the heavenly bodies. That’s why, for example, in Russia’s Murmansk, the sun can be seen two days before it actually crosses the line of the horizon.
I come down from the summit during the polar night, which, at my current latitude, will last “only” three weeks. This is another value that changes depending on how far we are from the equator. Those who live at the very edge of the area of polar night will experience it only for 24 hours (and if the sky is cloudy at that time they might miss it). Where my friends live in Tromsø, Norway—another two hundred kilometers farther north—the night will last more than twice as long. People from Longyearbyen in Svalbard (another one thousand kilometers up) won’t see the sun for 153 days. And you can keep counting, all the way up to the North Pole.
High Noon
The variable length of the polar night isn’t just a game of numbers; it translates directly into the amount and type of light that’s available to residents. Noon, understood as the middle of the day, is sometimes more perceptible because you can literally see it, but it can also be purely theoretical. In most northern regions, visibility will be best at noon, including during the polar night. Although by definition, polar night means the sun doesn’t make it over the horizon, near the Arctic Circle it’s close enough to the line that every day the darkness turns into grayness for a few hours. But when you get to Svalbard, noon is just a number on the dial. Nothing changes. For two and a half months, it’s always equally dark outside the window.
Four years ago even the biggest media, including the New York Times and the Guardian, were writing about the Norwegian island of Sommarøy, at the same latitude as Tromsø, whose residents decided that because of the long days and polar nights, they would give up time. The story of the first utopia on earth rocketed around the world. “Down with the tyranny of the clock!” people wrote. “Perfect freedom!” They celebrated that from then on: on Sommarøy time would cease to exist, and therefore you could do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. The shops didn’t have fixed hours, you could go to work when you wanted, whenever it was convenient. The sole exception was the schools, which had to open punctually for the children. The only thing missing in this vision was unicorns on the streets (maybe they got eaten by the polar bears, which are just as unrealistic in this place). But it turned out that the stories of the abolition of time on Sommarøy were in fact just a media campaign promoting the island. Some suspected this from the beginning, because, while the vision sounded romantic, it wasn’t possible to implement—precisely because even though nothing outside changes all day, the clock turns out to be very necessary. It’s an indispensable reference point. Without it, everything gets all mixed up.
People and Reindeer
In every place where the annual cycle includes heavy deficits of natural light, the sun is always at the center of attention: in religion, art and everyday life. In the North, more than anywhere else, you realize how much life depends on it. The heliocentric theory stated in the sixteenth century caused hysteria throughout the Roman Catholic church. In places where people had to deal with the sun’s absence, it’s always been obvious that the power our lives depend on is located outside the earth. Among the peoples of the North, the cult of the sun was highly developed. It was in the form of the sun that Beaivi, the most important goddess in the entire pantheon of Sámi mythology, created all forms of life, giving them light and warmth. During the winter solstice, she was offered sacrifices of white female reindeer, and the doors to houses were covered with butter, which would melt under the rays of the sun (toward the end of the winter, when animals were giving little milk, this was a true sacrifice). In this way they wanted to ensure the goddess’s favor and be certain that at the end of the long night, it would be light again.
People also sought Beaivi’s intervention for those with mental illness. The Sámi believed that madness is caused by a lack of sunlight during the long, dark nights. Contemporary Finnish psychologists also stress the link between kaamosmasennus (seasonal depression) and a lack of sunlight. While darkness helps with calm and relaxation in the short term, over the longer term it increases antisocial behavior, makes thoughts race, and can even cause hallucinations.
During the polar day, the reindeer’s favorite plants were reborn (and the wellbeing of these animals translated to that of their owners). Even so, the first sunny period is difficult for the animals. From the beginning of March, the temperature starts to rise and the snow slowly starts to melt, but when the water reaches the frozen ground under the thick layer of white, it freezes again. Flen forms: an icy shell that covers the plants and vegetation that are the reindeer’s food. They can use their hooves to dig through even a thick layer of snow and get to their favorite lichen underneath, but when the ground is covered by a thick layer of flen, they can’t break through. Then they’re left to look for lichen on trees—sometimes covering hundreds of kilometers in the search, but not always managing to find food. Sometimes the reindeer die of hunger.
This threat was exacerbated by the climate crisis: in recent years the snow has been melting faster, which means a thick layer of ice forms on the ground that is even harder to break up with a hoof. Global warming also means that rather than the snow you’d expect during the transition period, freezing rain falls, which adds more layers of flen. Ten years ago, on Russia’s Yamal Peninsula, the period between winter and spring turned out to be deadly for ninety thousand reindeer. And though that winter was particularly hard, today, great reindeer mortality is noted in that region every year.
Welcoming the Sun
The appearance of the sun above the horizon, putting an end to the polar night, is a breakthrough moment for every community that lives above the Arctic Circle. But every year is a little different. Sometimes the clouds are so low that you have to wait a few more days for the first rays. More and more often tourists join the local communities because the polar night (just like the northern lights, sundogs and white rainbows) has become a tourist attraction.
Residents of Russia’s Murmansk meet at the top of Sun Hill. For a full thirty-four minutes—that’s how long Day Number One lasts—they drink from thermoses, dance, and play music. In Longyearbyen on Svalbard, the meeting place is the steps of the old hospital. After 153 days without light, it’s the first place where the sun’s rays fall. Residents have been meeting there for almost 120 years. Even though the hospital’s long gone, new steps have been built in the same place; they serve as a sort of astronomical clock.
Meanwhile, people in Tromsø can feel a bit deceived: another week has to pass after the end of the polar night before the sun illuminates their faces and warms their bodies. That’s because of the high mountains that surround the city. So when the moment of the sun’s return approaches, people head out for a few days to the southern end of Tromsøya island, where it appears first. That’s also when they organize one of Europe’s best-known cinema events, the Tromsø International Film Festival, which draws international guests. The visitors haven’t spent the winter in darkness, so they’re no doubt more pleased by participating in the festivities than by the astronomical phenomenon. On the last night before the sun returns, people fry solboller – sun buns. You can tell them apart by their toppings: the ones sprinkled with sugar don’t have a filling, those with icing contain raspberries and the decorated ones have vanilla cream inside. Near sunrise, people gather at viewing sites to admire the first sunrise in a long time. Despite the early hour, the crowd grows quickly. And no wonder: not many experiences can compare to this extraordinary, hard-to-express joy that overcomes your whole body, when the first rays light up the darkness.
Read similar:
