November
can be a gloomy time of year in Swedish Lapland. Beginning 21 June,
days become shorter by about ten minutes per day. By November, It’s
dark by 3 p.m. and doesn’t get light again until 9 a.m. Later
in the month, when the snow blankets the ground and the Milky Way
blazes across the night sky, it seems a lot lighter, even if the
sun spends most of its time below the horizon. When below-freezing temperatures arrive, people make ice lamps. The first weekend
of November is a four-day weekend commemorating All Saint’s Day, the day
in the calendar when the dead should be remembered. Visits to the
graves of departed family members seem somehow appropriate at this
time of year.
Traditionally,
this was the time when many handicrafts were produced. Harvesting
was long over and the fields prepared for the long winter. Until
the snow came, men couldn’t go out to the forest to log. In
many parts of Sweden, especially up north, men disappeared for weeks
at a time in order to fell trees and drag them on horse-drawn sleds
to rivers where they would be floated to the nearest lumber mill.
The
last weekend in the month, the fourth weekend before Christmas,
is the First of Advent. On Saturday, stores, which sometimes drape
their windows for several days prior in order to generate an atmosphere
of excited anticipation, unveil their Christmas displays. Ski areas
open, conditions permitting, and the festive holiday season, one
of my favorites, begins.
Making an ice lantern: Fill a can or cut off milk carton with water, wait for the sides and bottom to freeze to about 1/2" thick. Pour out the water, remove the mold and place a tealight inside the lantern.Tealights produce so little heat that they don't melt the ice lamp. It makes Nordic winter nights cosy and homes welcoming |
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