darkness and sardines

So the dark, gray post-christmas blues settle upon the Trondheim household.  It reminds me of the beginning of a Weepies song Gotta Have You:

Gray, quiet and tired and mean
Picking at a worried seam
I try to make you mad at me
Over the phone

Red eyes and fire and signs
I'm taken by a nursery rhyme
I wanna make a ray of sunshine
And never leave home

So what is it like to live where there is only 4 hours of daylight or, for the glass half empty types, more like 20 hours of darkness?   Actually to be precise, our latitude is 63°25'N and 10°21'E.  According to my matlab calculations, on the winter solstice, the sun reached it's highest elevation of a whopping 3 degrees off the horizon and we had a scant 3.9 hours of daylight.

First, I think it helps to live here and experience the days shortening over time and acclimate gradually.  I think it was harder on my parents who came over and were suddenly thrust into the shortest day of the year.  "Quick mom and dad, wake up before the sun goes down."

Second, there seems to be more light around than the calculations lead you to believe. The skylight doesn't end exactly when the sun goes beneath the horizon, but lingers in rich red, pink, cyan blue colors long after the sun disappears.  Because the earth spins much slower up here, the sunsets and sunrises last much longer than those zippy equatorians. 

I know this may seem weird, but sometimes at night, the whole Trondheim glows and it seems like full daylight.  Really, it is bewildering.  The first time it happened, I thought that I was losing my mind -- either that I got mixed up in timing where day became night or that I was seeing light where there was none (like when you close your eyes and see spots).  I called the girls and confirmed with both of them that I wasn't in fact losing my mind, but that Trondheim was glowing bright like a Christmas tree.  I haven't fully modeled the effect, but it has to do with a combination of moonlight, street lights, high albedo snow and scattering particles in the atmosphere.   I think it's too bright in town for the northern lights to play a big role, but I'm willing to believe that it might also play some role.  The other night Annaliese called me down to the window facing town and said "Mom, it's happening again."  We all sat together and watched the bright nighttime sky.

Third, Vitamin D -  D3 that is.  There was a brief few days where I started to feel funky.  By funky, I mean a little crazy, aggressive, like a caged tiger.   That's when I started amplifying my intake of Vitamin D3. In fact, Vit D3 is added to my calcium supplements to maximize absorption and apparently (they should add this to the bottle) to prevent utter lunacy. 

For my fellow optics geeks, apparently it isn't visible light that is required, but UV light peaking at 295 nm that creates Vitamin D3. Fish products like Norwegian salmon are also good to consume.  Fish, like an average Trondheimer, need to consume Vitamin D3 from their diet of juicy phytoplankton.  Speaking of yummy treats, I see lots of people with sardines and other canned fish products around the lunch table at work and I get it now.  Those oilier fish are high in Vitamin D.  For those who might be sardine adverse, there are also many tanning beds in town as well. 

Apparently 85% of people tested in the U.S. were low in Vitamin D - important for bones and brains apparently.  Maybe sunscreen is making us dumber.  Maybe I'm just tired.  Maybe I'll dream about sardines.