We may have dark winters here, but the evening light at this time of the year is amazing and heartbreaking. Every year. Coming back to this light after a only a quick journey to more southern latitudes in the US was – despite the shortness of the trip – overwhelming. It is special. I just had to go out to be in this light for a while. These snapshots of the lilacs in the blue evening (10 pm today) doesn’t do the light justice, but it gives a sense of it. My mind goes to Vilhelm Mobergs “Unto a Good Land” where he describes Kristina’s longing for this light. I’ve published it earlier, but no one describes how these ethereal evenings affect us up here – at least the ones of us with a streak of sentimentality – as Vilhelm Moberg,  so I publish it again (good thing with having your own blog). Ethereal blue nights for poetry, soft voices and longing. And hope. An almost unbearable sense of hope and being alive.

We are blessed up here. Thanks to the warm gulf stream that embraces us, we have a mild, temperate climate, far from the harshness of the Siberian Arctic Tundra or the Arctic Alaska, whicht are located at the same latitude. It gives us mellow springs, warm summers and pleasant autumns. And still this ethereal light that sheds light over the dark hours.

“The sun’s arc climbed, the days lengthened, but the evenings had not yet begun to lighten. The sun departed and darkness came in his place , but no twilight under a pale heaven lingered over the earth. Kristina waited; spring was as yet only beginning . April came and brought sun-warm days to the shores of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga, but the evenings remained almost as dark as in the winter. Kristina still waited. And, when she at last realized that her waiting was futile, her thoughts wandered to a land where the evenings in the spring were light. After the many chores which each day fell to her with their unchanging sameness, her body was tired as she lay down on her bed in the evening. But her mind and soul wouldn’t rest, she lay awake with her thoughts. Outside the small, loghouse windows the night was dark, but she lay with her eyes wide open and gazed into the darkness where nothing could be seen. As spring progress, with darkness still prevailing, her sleepness hours increased. She still gazed through the darkness, towards that land where evenings were light in the spring. Memories reawakened, images stood clear. She and her sisters sat “twilighting” at the window. They used to delay lighting of the candles. By the light of the spring evening they would sit there, talking in hushed voices to each other. They never spoke aloud at twilighting – the gathering dusk of a April evening called for a whispered talk/…/ A year had passed since the April evening where she had said goodbye to her parents and her sisters at the gate of her childhood home./…/That evening had been light – one whole long twilight that still lit her way home on sleepless nights. It had rained throughout that day, but cleared towards the evening. There had been a fragrance of spring over the black fields and green meadows as she walked away from the farm where she was born.”

(Vilhelm Moberg – Unto A Good Land)