The days are getting longer and it now gets light sometime before five o’clock in the morning, an unwelcome harbinger of things to come. The midnight sun is one of those things that sounds much, much better than it is. I suppose it’s a cool enough phenomenon to experience as a tourist, but living with it is a whole ‘nother thing. The first year summer I lived this far north, I was amazed that it really stayed light around the clock. Seriously light, like broad-daylight light, twenty-four hours a day. The bloom soon went off that rose, however, and after two-and-a-half months went by with nary an hour of darkness, I was completely ready for the arrival of fall (the fact that fall begins in August up here is a matter for another discussion).

Before I moved up here, a lot of people warned me about the darkness in the wintertime, and truth be told, I was more than a little concerned about it myself. After living through almost two whole years here, though, I have to say that the light in the summer bothers me a whole lot more than the darkness in the winter. For one thing, even on the darkest day of the year we have at least four hours of daylight, and for another, the dark days are brightened considerably by the holiday lights and decorations. I think it’s quite cozy here in December, with nearly every window in town adorned by a lighted adventsljusstake (Advent candelabrum) or two.

I think it’s one of those things that a person has to grow up with to truly appreciate. None of the Swedes I know up here has any complaints about it. Olof says that all the light in the summer is the payoff for the long, dark winter. I suppose I can see his point, but you can have too much of a good thing.