A surfer’s reflections on a winter spent in the Norwegian ArcticBy Seamus RyderIt was a long, dark winter. The fall, as harsh and challenging as it seemed at the time, was remembered longingly as being warm, bright and full of cheerful o...
A surfer’s reflections on a winter spent in the Norwegian ArcticBy Seamus RyderIt was a long, dark winter. The fall, as harsh and challenging as it seemed at the time, was remembered longingly as being warm, bright and full of cheerful optimism. No one really knew when autumn ended - I seemed to blink my eyes sometime in October, and suddenly the snow had climbed down the final divide from between the mountains and the coast to cover everything in sight. Back then, we had raced to the sea in the morning to meet the rising sun. In winter, you could sleep in until noon and still wake in time to see the sunrise – alarms were set to ensure you didn’t miss the sunset.As winter set in, three hour drives between fjords and mountain passes became five hour drives through white-out (and white-knuckle) conditions. We set out on 10 hour return trips for one hour of surfing in dim, blue, light. Divine intervention was required to line up the right combination of wind, swell, and coastal access during the ever-vanishing window of daylight. On average, after the summer solstice (June 21st), each day was 10 minutes shorter than the last. In winter, the days bleed daylight at an even greater rate – Tuesday might be close to 20 minutes shorter than the preceding Monday. Of course, November eventually came along and then, one day, the sun simply refused to rise. That’s when things got really interesting. Nothing can really prepare you for the Polar Night. Ask the locals about it and suddenly they look at you with pity and compassion - like the look a parent gives a young child when they tell them their dog “has gone to live on a farm”. As the darkness approached, I was about as a naïve as a child too. I kept telling myself it was nothing I couldn’t handle, with years of Canadian winters under my belt and a mind that had proved itself fairly resilient to other stressors in the past. I even maintained a strict regimen of fish oil, as the Norwegians are apt to do, to ensure my daily dose of Vitamin D, something I once took for granted when living beneath the Australian sun. All the fish oil in the sea couldn’t save me. None of it really made a difference. I equate my experience with the Polar Night with somewhat of a mild depression. In fact, it’s a diagnosed medical phenomenon that befalls many inexperienced residents of the High North, sometimes referred to as Seasonal Acute Depression (SAD). The monotony of days without day but only perpetual night takes its toll. You lose motivation to do anything but the bare minimum. A constant fatigue engulfs you, yet night-time (the true hours of night during which you would regularly sleep, as distinguished from all the other hours of darkness) brings nothing but restlessness and disturbing dreams. Even if it were somehow possible to surf amidst the fierce winter snows and winds and the impenetrably black abyss of the Arctic winter, I doubt I could have. I began to lose hope, and at times, I thought I was losing my mind.Yet, even in darkness, there was light. At the lowest point of my slow descent into the despair brought on by the Arctic winter, the heavens themselves opened up and saved me. The Aurora Borealis (aka Northern Lights, Polar Lights) is one of the greatest mysteries known to man. While scientific and technological advancements continue to attempt to explain the spectacle as a product of solar radiation and reactive gases in our planet’s atmosphere, they’ll never be able to explain its otherworldly power to affect those who witness it. There are records of its strange powers throughout history – references found in the logs and journals of Arctic explorers, fables and legends devoted to it in the oral traditions of the Arctic indigenous peoples. The Inuit believe that the spirits of our ancestors can be seen dancing in the lights, and I experienced a feeling of solemn celebration at the sight and could almost hear their whispers. To me, the Aurora was a display of the supernatural and yet
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