A light in the dark – traditions to brighten winter’s darkness, from Greenland to Antarctica

02.01.2024 - 12:00 / theguardian.com

These long evenings at the year’s turn, when dusk seems to fall just after lunch, take me back to the extreme polar night I spent on a small, rocky island off the west coast of Greenland a few winters ago. The inhabitants of the Upernavik archipelago have no sight of the sun from late November to January. When I received the email inviting me to work in the artist’s “refuge” at the island museum – described as the most northerly in the world – I was offered a choice of summer or winter. “Contrary to the summertime,” wrote the museum director, “the darkness of the winter to many southerners seems like a terrible and nasty time lying in wait. But when one gets accustomed to the darkness it allows an interlude for thought that one usually lacks.”

It was true. As I acclimatised to the continuous darkness, I learned to appreciate the nuances of light: the clear constellations, the changing moon, or the lamps shining from my neighbour’s window. Other senses came to the fore. I heard the howls of sledge dogs echo from a distance, the crunch of a child’s feet in tiny snow boots. While the great icebergs on the horizon gleamed faintly in moonlight on their passage south, I experienced more intimate journeys in the shelter of my cabin and laid some old ghosts to rest.

The experience was austere, yet I was not isolated. There were many festivities to brighten the hours – it’s an endless party when dawn never breaks. The islander way of life taught me the importance of simple attention to rituals, and seeking out companionship. These included the everyday act of self-care that was making porridge for breakfast, and the more social daily round of kaffemik (drinking coffee in one house after another, often accompanied by sweets and biscuits). Christmas, New Year and Valentine’s Day came and went, but the most eagerly anticipated event was the return of the sun. The date of the first faint glow on the horizon varies up and down this coast, usually beginning around 13 January in Aasiat, further south.

Where I was in the north, we watched TV reports from lower latitudes, as the days passed and light crept closer to us. Then came the day when our own community climbed to the highest point of the island for a view of the golden orb rising over the sea ice. We were led by schoolchildren who wore suns cut from yellow paper on their snowsuits and sang a song of welcome. The sun’s return offers a moment of hope, no matter how precarious life in the region has become.

In Iceland the nights and days are more distinct, but here, too, atmospheric phenomena offer wonder and solace. I lived in a corrugated iron hut in Siglufjörður on the Trollskagi peninsula, while writing my book The Library of Ice. Reading and writing indoors