Twilight

It’s that time of the year again.

I recently spoke with a friend of mine. He’s Moroccan and he’s lived in Iceland for a few years now. I asked him how it went and he just shook his head. “It’s this fucking darkness, man,” (he never swears) “I don’t know how you can handle it.”

I had hardly noticed, but once he mentioned it I felt a familiar feeling sweep through my body. Of course I’d noticed, I just hadn’t given it much thought. But, all the same, it was all there, yet again. The extended tiredness, the lethargy, the reflective mood, the sadness. In Iceland, it doesn’t matter whether you’re depressed or not. The darkness changes you.

Or should I say, the light changes you, because it is dark for two thirds of the year or so. We spend most of our lives waiting for those three golden months of pure brightness, those months when our country is transformed into a sun empire and all bets are off. There’s a reason we are a nation of maniacs – during the long autumn/winter/spring months Iceland’s suicide rate beats that of any other nation in Western civilization. During the summer, however, sleep is almost frowned upon. Nobody in Iceland dares to dream in June or July. Not when it’s all coming true before your eyes. In those times, all the world’s a stage, and life is a party.

Last year our entire economic system famously collapsed. That the collapse should happen upon the start of October, just in time for the arrival of extended, dark months, didn’t give me any pause at the time, but it sure does now. What would the collapse have been like at the start of June? Would we have raged, rallied and rioted as was the case in the darkness of winter? Or would we just have shrugged our shoulders and played another bout of midnight golf in the perfect twilight of sun and moon?

I often wonder about friends living in faraway places. Guys like my esteemed colleagues here, Björgvin and Gunnar, creatures of darkness living closer to the equator than those of us marooned ‘up here’. The one time I’ve ever lived abroad was the three months I spent in the state of Oklahoma, USA between September and December 2001. My most vivid memory of coming home on December 2nd that year was how hard the darkness hit me. Walking out of the terminal at eight in the morning into a blizzard storm, it was so dark you couldn’t see the blazing hail that attacked you from all angles. You could only feel it puncture the skin on your face. Like some fearless predator, once you saw it, it was too late. There was no escape.

Not even in rural America, far away from the lights of any kind of civilized world, would you find such darkness. Even there, you had the stars to look up to, to give hope to. When you’re besieged by stealth snow in the Icelandic darkness, there is no hope. Only one thought persists; find cover before you become too cold/wet/tired.

So, for my first post, I’d like to ask my fellow blahgers a question: how goes it for you? How’s the darkness out there? And, how does it compare to the north-Atlantic nights? Any sign of depression? No? Or is it just me?

Guess so. Now, excuse me while I set myself on fire. An Icelander can but dream of dying in a haze of light.

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