Spitsbergen, a Norwegian island in the Arctic, is bathed in darkness for months. An influencer shows her cheerful view of the chill and the endless night to an audience of millions every day.
Cecilia Blomdahl vividly remembers the moment she looked at the Arctic Ocean for the first time on a chilly winter night. The inky darkness made it impossible to pinpoint where the land began and where it ended.
It was 2015 when Blomdahl arrived in Spitsbergen, a Norwegian archipelago near the North Pole. She was there to work at a restaurant with friends. The polar night had just begun and the sun would not appear on the horizon again until February. But what really struck her, and has stuck with her ever since, was the silence.
“I couldn’t understand at the time how this would one day become my home,” she says. “I was only planning to stay for three months.”
Now 34-year-old Blomdahl lives in a house overlooking a fjord. She lives with her partner Christoffer and their four-legged friend Grim in Longyearbyen – a town with 2,400 inhabitants. Almost every day, hundreds of thousands to millions of others watch the trio’s adventures in the Far North via TikTok and YouTube.
Viewers come for what Blomdahl describes as the “cozy corner” of the internet. Gazing at the Northern Lights, drinking coffee by a fjord, near encounters with polar bears, dog walks in the cold and snowmobile expeditions in the Arctic: Blomdahl gives a generous glimpse into her Arctic existence. Viewers love to ask her how she deals with the extremes of the polar night. How does she get food and is she tempted to hibernate?
And yes, she is just as enthusiastic about winter during a conversation on Zoom as she is in her videos. Blomdahl likes the cold and dark season. And yes, she has a dozen pairs of pajamas in her closet.
‘Whiteouts’ and wild animals
Blomdahl grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden, a coastal city where winters were also dark and the sun set around 3 p.m. She attributes her love of winter to her parents, who encouraged Blomdahl and her two sisters to spend a lot of time outdoors.
“I spent as much time outside all winter as I did during the summer,” she says. “Winter was never seen as something bad for us: it was just another season. That’s what I carry with me now.”
Does that sound too cheerful? It is true that Spitsbergen is not all fun. Although Blomdahl mainly makes videos about the natural beauty of Spitsbergen, she also points out the dangers, such as the development of whiteouts – where the contrast fades and there no longer seems to be a difference between the surface and the sky – and the encounters with wild animals. In fact, she often has nightmares in the days leading up to the polar night, the part of the year without daylight in the northernmost and southernmost areas of our planet.
“I think it means I respect nature,” she says. “Yes, it can be scary, but I think it’s good to have fear. If you are not afraid, you may become reckless.”
There are a few tricks she uses to prevent the winter blues: sufficient exercise, taking vitamin D supplements, applying lotions and regular visits to a nail stylist. Planning her day is key to staying positive, she says. If she ever feels like the darkness is suffocating her, she goes for a walk under the endless starry sky.
Longyearbyen, the main city on Spitsbergen, is a melting pot of more than 50 nationalities, says Blomdahl. Spitsbergen itself is seeing a small tourism boost thanks to the videos the influencer makes about the island, says Anja Nordvalen, the marketing coordinator of the Spitsbergen tourism office. There has been an increase in visitors from the United States in particular, it sounds.
“Everything here is somewhat extraordinary, even though it is ultimately our normal life,” says Nordvalen. “I think it’s intriguing for people to see our everyday lives. Anyone who leaves their hut here must protect themselves against polar bears.”
Spitsbergen is about as far north as humans can live. Longyearbyen, the largest settlement, is named after an American mine owner, John Munro Longyear, who founded the Arctic Coal Company after visiting the islands. Spitsbergen is home to a university campus, a satellite research station, a gene bank with seeds of all kinds of plants and a small but vibrant tourist industry that takes advantage of the outdoor activities available. The island was once a prolific coal exporter for Russia.
According to the legend among the residents of Longyearbyen, Santa Claus lives in an abandoned mine in a hill. Every year on the first day of Advent they ignite lights in the mineincluding in the shape of a Christmas tree.
After decades of using coal for electricity supply on Spitsbergen, the island will soon switch to diesel. This also means that one of the last coal-fired power stations in the region will close. Although Blomdahl does not speak out in any way on geopolitical issues.
“There are a lot of dark points of view, so I like to be a cozy corner,” she says. “I think that’s also what people get out of it.”
Grim, her 8-year-old Finnish Lapphund, makes sure Blomdahl gets outside no matter how dark it is. She feels safe with him, but she still carries a firearm in case she encounters a polar bear.
Blomdahl says polar night forces her to shift her focus inward. For her, winter is a period that “we experience here instead of undergoing it. We all chose to be here.”
The real darkness of polar night sets in around January, after the warmth and light of the holidays have been stored away again. Only some time later a sparkle of light will appear in the sky again and then the pitch-black night will turn into the clear blue sky. In March the blue hour returns, that is the moment when winter is over and the sun slowly returns. The polar day, when the sun does not set, lies ahead.
“It’s like a rebirth,” said Blomdahl.
© The New York Times
