The official polar night period began some time ago. In daily life, you don’t really notice it. The same colors and darkness of the polar night have been prevalent for a while now. The fact that the polar night officially starts in Western Lapland is mainly just a date among others.

I’ll say it again, but the polar night is one of the most beautiful times I have experienced in Lapland. The darkness makes the colors of the sky and the surrounding nature magically beautiful. Some would describe the polar night as a long sunrise or sunset without the actual sun. The brightness of the day is absent, the colors are muted and faintly cautious, yet so stunning.

The polar night is often dreaded, and some people leave for this reason when moving north. However, the polar night is much more than just darkness. It is anything but dark. I could no longer give up the polar night and its beauty.

There is only a little actual daylight, non-dark time. Just around noon, there is barely an hour, at most a couple. On clear days, that entire time is a symphony of colors on the horizon. Every possible shade of violet, pink, and blue competes with one another. The pure white, untouched snow in many places reflects the hues and brightens the landscape with its own contribution. The colorless bluish-gray of the snow-dusted forests stands quietly amid all the colorful splendor.

I experience the polar night like this: within a single day, there are three different times. The morning is the dark time before daylight arrives. It lasts until around 10 a.m., when the first faint colors appear. During this time, it is nice to engage in activities at home, to work, and to wake up peacefully by the light of candles and the fireplace. It’s a time to enjoy the calm and atmosphere brought by the darkness.

The second time, the light time, lasts only a little while, and it is used for outdoor activities whenever possible. Almost every day off is spent outdoors with friends during the entire light period, going to the fells, skiing, walking with the dogs, and soaking in all the beauty and the colors of the darkness. Even during sunless times, there is light; it is just different, muted, and cautious. That is why it should be fully embraced and enjoyed for the moments it offers.

As the darkness begins to creep in around two o’clock, a sense of tiredness takes over. At two or three in the afternoon, it is time for a daytime rest, often accompanied by short naps or a calm coffee break. The third time feels like the start of a new day. After resting, one feels more alert, and there is time for activities, work, or, for example, preparing dinner with friends.

In this way, the days are rhythmically guided forward through the polar night. Accepting the scarcity of light, the occasional tiredness, and the rather calm pace of life.

A few days ago, we went to greet the Pallastunturi mountains, which are slumbering in the colors of the polar night. Pallas is one of my favorite places in Tunturi-Lappi. Not only the mountain range itself, whose silhouette is recognizable from afar, radiating a sense of home, and all its peaks are becoming familiar and have been hiked many times. The entire Pallas area, with its dark forests on the eastern side, broken by the whiteness of a few small lakes and the warm lights flickering from the windows of the lovely northern villages. The national park-like landscape on the western side stretches almost as far as the eye can see, swallowing even the only road in the area so that it’s easy to imagine standing in the middle of the wilderness.

Here, only the colorless hues of the polar night and the deep silence of the forest prevail.

During the polar night, there are very few visitors at Pallas. The popular ski trails around the mountains are only being established in the early spring, and there are not many tracks yet in the forest. At this time, you can enjoy great peace here. You can simply listen to the rhythm of your own breath growing faster as you wade through the deep snow toward the summit of Lommoltunturi. As the trees thin out at the base of the slope, the view of the Pallastunturi mountains opens up. Their pure white peaks look majestically grand.

The clock has just struck one. The darkening afternoon blue swallows the last shades of violet from the sky and deepens again toward darkness.

On the way home, the full, glowing moon lights the path so well that you could easily find your way even without lights. It is dark on the home road; there are no streetlights. Instead, the lights of the polar night illuminate the home: the northern lights, whose magical glow you can hardly ever tire of. Or the thought that they dance right above the roof of my home.

The polar night in Lapland is so much more than just darkness.

♥ Hugs, Sanna