Midnight sun and the promise that night will return

On April 19th the sun set for the last time in Longyearbyen, commencing their season of midnight sun. For the next 4 months this little village at 78° north will be bathed in sunlight for 24 hours of the day as the arctic tundra, almost indistinguishable from the white sky, slowly reveals itself in scars of blue-grey. By August 23rd, the valley will be moss-covered, the white-coated reindeer fattening for polar night.

Living under constant daylight is obviously an unusual experience.  I haven’t been here for nearly long enough to make any meaningful judgement about how it affects the psyche, but the village shows clues of what life is like.  Many homes have the odd window masked with aluminium foil, and 24hr time is a must – a local told me they’ve arrived at work 12 hours early on at least one occasion. Constant light makes it difficult to switch off - it’s a mentally taxing environment to live in.

Longyearbyen is a town of approximately 2500 people, wedged in the Longyearbyen valley between the mountains of Platåberget and Gruvefjellet

Since I’ve arrived in Longyearbyen, midnight sun has made me reflect on ideas of resilience, surrender, transformation and the cyclical reality of time. I expect images of the tundra will make it into my exhibition at PS next year, but this trip is mostly important for the ideas it informs. When I went to Iceland in 2022, I was tuned into feelings of freedom, euphoria and rest, but this trip is different. I feel too impassioned, we are in a pivotal moment in history, a moment of crisis, but if midnight sun has taught me anything so far, it’s that it’s not worth fearing the daylight, but that the daylight will never end.

Nevertheless, even night will come again.

The fjord where Longyearbyen is situated froze over this year for the first time in 20 years

The cyclical nature of time is something the West has grown to resist. William Strauss and Neil Howe explain that we typically follow a linear view of time in the West in which we perceive time as constantly moving forward. We value progress and growth, and it means that anything can happen and that when it does, we feel especially significant because we feel it has never happened before. It means technology is invented and the world is interconnected beyond comprehension, it also means war and crisis and catastrophe and the belief that this moment is the “it” moment when it all reaches a cataclysmic peak. It’s terrifying because when time is linear, anything goes, midnight sun might not end this year, the crisis we are living through is something we all played a role in marching humanity towards. Alternatively, history tells us that crisis has happened before and will continue to happen every century or so. While it does not justify nor bring comfort or relief to crisis, war crimes and injustice occurring at the hands of criminal corporations, governments and elites around the world, it does teach us an important lesson – after crisis, there is always a high, after winter, flowers will bloom, after midnight sun, night will come again. Linear time, a narcissistic Western invention fools us into believing that the criminal path our leaders are taking us down right now is a permanent, uncontrollable, endless progression forward. Knowledge of cyclical time teaches us that even tyrants aren’t immune from change, transformation, mortality, and rebirth after destruction.

I don’t have the answer to crisis. Like many people, I feel snowed (right now, quite literally) under the weight of wars funded by our tax dollars, pandemics mismanaged by leaders who work for us, violence waged on innocent people fuelled by a system that is totally broken. Perhaps that’s why I find myself so drawn to the ends of the earth – on the individual level, our everyday complaints feel so petty atop a mountain peak, but it also makes me even more enraged because I’m certain we wouldn’t be in this mess if our leaders came face to face with glaciers, were forced to climb them, feeling weak and miniscule and fragile while navigating exhaustion and windchill and the terrifying reality that one slip and that’s it.

The whiteout experienced during the ascent up Trollsteinen was totally destabalising and totally spectacular

Nature feels like such an antidote, and yet once again, it and our spiritual connection to it is being destroyed. If humanity is doomed to repeat itself, so be it, but surely this crisis feels so massive because we’ve forgotten how cycles happen so when this crisis has come about we were not prepared, not tuned into the stories of our ancestors and maybe, the people who led us into the crisis knew that the perfect way to wage war and control is to make us forget the cycles and lessons that prevent tyrants from ruling for too long.

I realise this blog is a bit dark considering I’m in one of the most mesmerising places on the planet, but honestly it doesn’t feel that way. We know this is happening, let’s talk about it. Firstly, forget the notion that the ordinary person is responsible for the crises the world is facing, we mustn’t succumb to that unfair burden, it only makes us weak and less able to act. What we can do is take responsibility for our free will, protect the people we love, build strong families and meaningful connections with friends and neighbours, practice the virtues of grace, kindness and generosity, remember that our essence is not physical, let go of fear but not of passion where passion is due. Don’t let them make us battery hens, the night will come again and that’s when dreams come alive.