it is like loving someone in the dark who never answers

 

As we rode into Stockholm from the airport on the Arlanda Express (a 20-minute, non-stop ride into the center of the city; maybe we will have this in New York some time before 2100), I noticed that the ground and trees were covered with white frost.  I thought that perhaps there had been an ice storm.

Later as we were walking around the city, I confirmed that the white covering the ground was not snow (although it did snow later in the trip), but what I think is called hoar frost.

 

It's too bad people don't use the word "hoar" more often.  Everywhere you looked in Stockholm: hoar.

 

I assume this is because the city is spread across countless islands, so the air must be extremely humid.

 

I never knew exactly what the temperature was during our visit, but it felt very cold.  But it's probably not the cold, it's the humidity.

 

I found the freezing temperatures refreshing.  Certain persons raised in the Levant felt less refreshed.

The sun rose around 8:30 and started to set in the early afternoon.  The sun never got very high even at its zenith.

 

 

A consequence of this was that the city was bathed in very beautiful light during the short time when there was any sunlight at all.  Sunrise slid seamlessly into sunset.

 

 

 

It did limit the time available for sightseeing.

 

 

On New Year's Day, I watched a BBC special on Norwegian television in which Joanna Lumley traveled to Arctic Norway to view the northern lights.

 

Joanna Lumley is a very odd person, with her aristocratic accent and very developed vocabulary.  She is what the British call posh.  At one point she used the word "palaver", and I wished I could have read the Norwegian subtitles, since I couldn't remember what that word meant.  An article by Caitlin Moran in the Times of London described Joanna Lumley as "someone who looks as if she's made entirely of hand-cream, poetry and champagne".

In any case, when she finally saw the northern lights, she started crying hysterically, saying, "It feels like it knew how much we wanted to see it! Thank you! Oh, thank you!"  They did look spectacular, but it's always hard to know if what you are seeing on television is real.  Or if anything you see is real.  I found myself getting choked up too, though.

There were no northern lights visible in Stockholm, to my knowledge.

Then we went to the roof of the hotel, where, for a nominal fee, you could swim in a warm outdoor pool.

   

I wished it had been a bit warmer, but at least the sunlight was very flattering.

 

It was difficult to run from the pool back into the hotel, even with robes and slippers, since the robes and slippers froze a bit while we were in the water.

It took a very long time for our room to be cleaned, so we had to sit up in the spa area for a while.  There was a sauna, where a Finnish woman took control and poured water on the rocks at regular intervals.  The Italians present deferred to her expertise.  There was a young boy, who I assumed was her son, with whom she would speak in Finnish.  The Finnish language sounds like math.  Eventually I left to go sit and watch the trains go back and forth.

 

I was happy to be somewhere relatively extreme on the first day of 2009.  It felt purifying to go swimming out in the cold, even though it was nothing like the traditional Scandinavian practice of sitting in a sauna and then plunging into a freezing lake.  I was just sitting in a chlorinated pool on top of a building in the middle of the largest city in the largest country in Scandinavia.  Still, the cold air, the water, the hoar, the snow, and the low sun did seem somewhat otherworldly.  It seemed so elemental.  The polar regions are like deserts (at least for now), where there is less to distract you from the sky, the sun, the stars, the planets, and the rest of the universe.  But I had Joanna Lumley crying and thanking the northern lights fresh in my mind, and I'm sure if I hadn't been in the comfortable and civilized setting of Stockholm, but instead in the middle of Siberia or North Dakota or Saskatchewan, I would have just felt terrified in the face of the infinite void. 

But we had dinner reservations at a popular fish restaurant, and it's hard to feel terrified in Sweden.

Comments

[henry]

I thought Denmark was the largest Scandinavian country. Are they not counting Greenland as part of their territory anymore?

[The Gay Recluse]

Vienna was also very humid/cold, and I thought the exact same thing about the beautiful light there...since I got back to New York, I keep telling people that I want to go north for the winter, and for some reason they all seem to think I'm kidding.

[R J Keefe]

Asaph freezing by the brazier — I want to give him a cup of hot chocolate!

[Boomer]

Asaph does have a certain sad puppy that needs a hug look about him in the picture...adorable.

[Birdie]

So glad you were able to avoid the terror of the infinite void. Did you cuddle Eeyore as a child?

[Boomer]

Also I have baan to both North Dakota and Saskatchewan and the infinite void sums it all up nicely.

[Aaron]

I can easily see Joanna Lumley as the abbess of a double monastery.

Funny thing:

I accidentally watched "Real Housewives of Orange County" at the gym yesterday. Did you know that "posh" in America means a dark tan, the wearing of lots of white lipstick and the practice of prancing around your suburban cul de sac in a hot pink cocktail dress at ten in the morning?

Finally, I think that America understands what class is.

[homer]

When I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, 1979-1982, the winters were so cold you could throw a bucket of water into the air and it would freeze instantly and fall as drops of ice onto the snow. I am thankful that I do not live there now.

[Michel]

I love your new descriptor. This site is indeed like "loving someone in the dark who never answers."

Self-aware, smart, and sexy!

[daninokc]

"the finnish language sounds like math" ha ha.. that is awesome