Thank you for being here! The seventh edition of the Atlas is a special three parts newsletter. As a podcast and community set up to explore building a home in the “in-between” states of life, this month we are observing a month of “Wintering”. Traversing the transitions that the cold brings, letting go of the spring energy of production for a moment. The last weekend of January in pre-industrial cultures, was the last moment before renewal commenced on February 1st. Friday, Saturday and Sunday we will share with you a journey in three parts of a personal experience with wintering, followed by three curated prompts to reflect on your own: an artistic experiment with ice, a silent retreat and a voyage to the Arctic Circle.
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Returning to darkness: a journey to the Arctic Circle
You can learn a lot from the way you must dress up for the cold in the deep North: that the cold is inevitable. That it could be deadly. That it forces you indoors beyond your will power.
That the cold takes time.
Reaching Tromsø at the beginning of polar night last December, required a lot of preparation.
First we needed to get educated about walking.
On top of buying shoes that could sustain a -10 C temperature, we had to think about how to not make boots slip on the ice. The “spikes” - as they call them, are the essential add-ons to crunchy walks punching the icy pavements.
There is also a strict rule to remove them on buses and indoors to not ruin the surfaces. Which Norwegians observe saintly, without fail.
Second was skin.
We needed to get thermal wear layers under everything. Top, bottom and socks. We learned silk is an isolating fabric and should be worn under wool before putting your shoes on. Double socks are a must.
In the search for a perfect jacket we landed on what we already used for the humid milanese winter that had a snow/ski tolerance, as we learned that on the Arctic Circle the temperatures are lower but drier.
All of this gear, made up for a good extra twenty minutes out of our day to outfit before heading out and peeling us up before heading in.
In the week we were there, our bodies learned to slow down along with the cold habits and adapt to their precision.
But nothing could truly prepare our eyes.
During polar night, the sun never rises.
It is a mere reflection of a star blaring somewhere else and reaching this land in its oblique aftermath. The result is an eerie magical canary yellow permanent twilight, which looks like gold and feels like silver. The only time the light changes is the so-called “blue hour”, when everything is awash with an indigo filter.
That’s when you know the cold will only get colder. And it is not even early PM.
We had to adapt to having two days in one. Our first night fell around lunch, and sometimes forced us to sleep. Our second night fell after dinner.
All we could do was surrender to the cold. It was nice to discover it wasn’t just us.
Norwegian culture is designed around the inevitability of the cold as an antidote to its effects. Offices close down at 3 PM. The sugar intake is secured by the many candy stores in close distance. Indoor saunas and water parks are designed to secure high levels of dopamine. Architecture aims high with its pointy structures and wide wandering spaces to keep the spirit up.
In the northernmost Hot Dog joint on Storgata, the city’s Main Street, I picked up “The Poor Man’s Connoisseur Guide to Stargazing, Trailblazing and Hell-raising in the coolest city of the North.”
In there I discovered the locals call Tromsø “North of Normality” cause everything here is larger than life.
They like to exaggerate about exaggerations, bragging about being the coldest, the biggest, the prettiest, the smartest, the drunkest, the most northern. They have a reputation for being loose, even in their sense of time keeping (ordering food at a restaurant on time is challenging), but because they live through the longest darkest and the longest brightest day of the year, they are thought to live longer and be funnier.
Tromsø-ness is ultimately about how to come out of the constrictions and contractions of the winter with an expandable, joyful, unexpected spirit.
Prompt # 3: What joys does this winter brings to you, as you are experiencing its limits?
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If you feel like, share your answer in the comment section below.
Thank you for reading this special three part edition of the Atlas.
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