Northern Solstice

Circumpolar winters are hard on people, body-and-soul hard. Even at the southern edge of the Arctic region, we go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, with at best only eight hours between sunrise and sunset.

I always recognize a certain something in the art and literature of Nordic countries, a relationship to snow, dark, and cold that is absent from the winter scenes of more southerly climes - and a take on life that contains both joy and a certain resolute bleakness.

The work of Edvard Munch captures the northern mood. Living north of 60 hardens Norwegians to the rigours of winter, the biting cold and the seemingly endless dark.

There are two Munch paintings called Starry Night, one from 1923-24 and and one from 1893. There is a wild variety in the colouration of images pulled from internet sources, but the two below epitomize for me two of the moods of winter found in Munch.

The later painting (1923) captures the brilliant, almost buoyant effects of a winter night in the snow. One feels exhilarated, can imagine being outdoors, and being captivated by the glorious colours. The lights of town and home in the distance are the security that makes staying outside energetic and fun. I can hear the ring of the steel blades of skates in this painting. It all sparkles.

The older painting (1893) portrays the weighed down, it's-still-winter mood one often has at the solstice and on into January, even February. The stars may be out, but the dark is heavy and foreboding.

Throughout the winter, the white changes from the stark white of a new snowfall, through the "brown sugar" stage, to the brown and dirty break-up stage - perhaps winter at its most depressing: like Munch's painting Winter Landscape from 1918.

Usually by the time mud appears in the snow, spring is near. People here begin to shovel the snow from their lawns onto the street to speed things up. As spring comes closer, sprinklers appear in the snow on lawns all over the city. I've seen this nowhere else, but understand the rush to spring.

The light of spring and the breezes of the new, fresh season are a joy, really, and relief that we survived yet another winter.

                                

Munch's painting Spring (1889) says it all. By the time we reach the shortest day of the year, it can't come too soon.