I am still waiting for the sun to come up. It is 10.30 and has not yet made an appearance today. In my sunless, confused and yawning state, I am beginning to think that it won’t come out at all. Unless you have lived this far north, you just can’t imagine how hard it is to deal with sunlight deprivation year after year. I know that sounds like I am whining and I guess I am. But living without sun has a cumulative effect and it’s not a good one.
To better understand what is happening to me, you have to realize how far north I am living. While there are a lot of people who can’t accurately put Stockholm on the map, most can place St. Petersburg, Russia. Here at 59 degrees north, I am the same as St. Petersburg. Now do you get with how far north I am and thus how dark it gets and stays in the winter? I am happy that I do not live any farther north. Kiruna in the winter would be deadly to me.
The thing with Stockholm this time of year is that it goes go from gray, dreary and just plain depressing in one minute to having the most spectacular and soft light that you have ever seen. It is like an artist has pulled out his paint brush and smoothed out all the hard edges. Two days ago, it was so foggy in the morning that I could not see the island of Kungsholmen across from me. Then suddenly, the sun broke through. It is not bright and intense like at the equator, but rather soft and yellow. It felt miraculous.
Given my brain dead state today, Robert my scientist husband has already declared that we must have salmon for dinner tonight to load up on all that valuable omega 3 fatty stuff. And I am sitting in front of my energy light, desperately hoping it will wake me up.
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