Oh Those Summer Nights

Oh Those Summer Nights...

Full moon. Taken in early June 2017 at around 1:30 am, photo looks darker than it actually was. 

Before moving, I had heard about how in Finland they have what is called the midnight sun. During the summer months the sun takes longer to go below the horizon and by mid-June the sun does not set for long if at all. It was not until I came here and experienced it myself that I could see a certain beauty to it and why Finns love summer time.

There were definitely some drawbacks that I found, as someone who has never known this kind of thing and always lived where the sun came up in the morning and set in the evening. When you grow up with this routine it creates an automatic clock within your body, you get tired when the sun sets, fall asleep, when it starts to get light out you begin to wake up to start the day. Going from that to a place where no matter what time it is, there is light in the sky.. it can be... overwhelming and exhausting! Not only was I dealing with jetlag and learning to adjust to a completely different time zone, I was also trying to adjust myself to all this sunlight. I do not even think I slept properly for the first couple months. 

It was difficult, when it was 9pm and still looked like 3 in the afternoon, still sunny and warm, how could I go to sleep? My husband would laugh at me because I would have to sleep with a sleeping mask AND blinds down AND black out curtains. Even then sometimes there was too much light for me to feel like it was really late and time to go to bed. It is such an odd feeling too when you wake up thinking it could be 7 in the morning, time to start the day and when you look at the clock in the kitchen you see that it is 2 in the morning! For the first month that I was here the darkest I ever saw was around 12 and 2 in the morning with it looking more like dusk or just light enough to see where you were walking, by midsummer it was as bright as it would be around early morning or late afternoon, with a certain glow all around. 

View outside our window at 11 pm.

The picture above was taken at the darkest time during the night, around 1:30 am and even the picture depicts the sight darker than it was. My husband and I were at the summer cottage owned by my father-in-law and I had to get up in the middle of the night for a trip to the outhouse, I remember trying so hard to stay quiet and trying to concentrate on where I was walking. There was just enough light to see where I was going to make sure I did not trip over a rock or tree root but dark enough to get an eerie feeling of walking alone in the middle of the night where wild animals could be lurking around. When I made it back to our room the view of the sea really was breathtaking, the moon shining so bright above the still and quiet water. I could have stayed out there for hours. 

It was probably not until after midsummer, maybe around mid-July I started to get used all the light, and started to enjoy it more. I started being to able to stay up later without feeling so tired, and in the morning when I got up I had more energy then too. It was refreshing to have that feeling of being able to do so much in a day and not needing as much sleep. Even the atmostphere around the cities would show evidence of how people here really enjoyed their summers. Whenever we went to Turku or the times I went to Helsinki, it felt like there were celebrations all over for people to enjoy their summer. 

Now as it gets darker and darker each day, I am starting to miss those summer nights. Although I am eager to experience the dark days of a Finnish winter, I have noticed I have become more tired all the time, and less motivated to get work done, along with feeling like there is not much to do for outings and places to go unless you journey up north to Lapland. We shall see what the winter brings...

Until next time,

Stephanie