https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/reader-center/arctic-winter-night.html
My friend Jenna shared this article with us, thinking of our long northern nights. It doesn’t feel so extreme here in Trondheim, especially when the days are getting longer. But stopping to reflect on it is valuable, while we still have it.
What I notice is the feeling that the sunrise and sunset takes forever. The sky gets the dusky sunset feeling around 3:00 then the actual sunset is around 4, but the twilight lasts until about 5. Same in the morning–it starts getting light around 8, sunrise at 9, but it’s not really light until almost 10.
My walk to work takes me to the top of the local ski hill where I can look over the whole city. Going there and coming back, in the morning and in the afternoon, the city is bathed in light so clearly from the south. It’s very striking that the sun is always in the south when you see it because it’s just sliding up along the horizon, popping up low in the south, then dipping down before it really gets into the west. That explains the long sunrise and sunset light.
Yesterday afternoon felt like a full strong sunlight for one of the first times because the sky was clear and blue, but I have had a few of those days on my walk home from work too. The shadows are very strong because the sun is still so low in the south, coming sideways instead of from above. We were walking home from the grocery store going due south with nothing to block the sun. Nora wanted to take a side street, but Ted said that we should keep on this road to get our vitamin D for as long as possible. It does feel good to have your skin in the sun, even if it is just your face and hands.
Next month we are going up to Alta to see the Northern lights, it’s about as far north as it gets (zoom out the map to see the whole country and where Alta is). We wanted to wait until February so that we would have a few hours of sunlight way up there to see the landscape. We are going to the “ice hotel” (although we won’t stay in it, unfortunately, no family rooms for 4 apparently), but we will go dog sledding, reindeer sledding, Sami culture, and Northern Lights hunt, along with northern meals and sauna/jacuzzi to get cozy! https://sorrisniva.no/
