I post one of these pictures every year, I know, but even though it’s my tenth summer here I still find it remarkable. This was taken off my front porch just after midnight last night, and as you can see, it’s broad daylight. It had been cloudy and raining off and on, which left things looking just a little less bright than they sometimes do, but it’s still not even close to dark.

For the first several years I lived here I had a very hard time with this ’round-the-clock daylight. You often hear people bemoan the darkness in the winter, but honestly, all the light in the summer was much more difficult for me to come to terms with. It’s only been in the last couple of years that it didn’t completely mess up my sleeping patterns, and this is the first summer I can say that it hasn’t bothered me at all. Who knows, maybe in another ten years I’ll be able to go to bed at midnight with my curtains wide open and the sun shining on my face, just like a true Swede.