The Lantern when it is seventeen below.

At
winter’s end, we both got the tattoo

of Kaamos “79 ° North” on our shoulders. After

flask after flask of bittersweet
Jägermeister Mule and a night of
cross-country skiing on the fjord to
observe the Northern Lights, there
seemed to be a permanence in the
The melting Arctic is a crime scene,
gesture. A holiness to it.
and I am like CSI Ny-Ålesund.
Sacramental and sacred. We weren’t
Trond is the anonymous
big drinkers and we had used a
perpetrator leaving evidence and
month of drinking credits to line
clues for me to discover, like
our shelves, to consecrate the
breadcrumbs leading back to him.
occasion.
“Jonna,” he had said, the day we
We had lived together in the world's
first met at the research institute,
northernmost settlement, located
“If you are going to make it up here,
on the southern bank of
don’t lock your doors.” It seemed
Kongsfjorden, throughout the whole
like a life philosophy, rather than a
of the polar night. The tattoo was a
survival tip.
memento and a reminder of that
It is ironic. Out on Kings Bay, the
time. The promise of an
coal miners came first, then the
unbreakable bond. Then, with the
science outposts. Trond was already
first sunrise, everything changed. As
out here mining the Arctic when I
a biologist, I should know by now
was still just a bright-eyed
that what is forged in the endless
undergrad, out to save nature from
night, seldom survives the spring
the ravaging capitalists.
thaw.
When we met, we both understood
Store Norske Mining Company was
immediately that we were on
going to close the Gruve 7 mine,
opposite sides. I guess sleeping with
once and for all, and Trond would
the enemy isn’t out of the question
stay and find work. Plans were
made. Treaties of peace were
arranged. And the wartime between
us seemed like a distant memory.
Then the Ukraine war broke out,
and the mine received a stay of
execution. Trond was called back.
“See you in the spring,” he had said
and was gone the next day. Neither
of us doubted the war would end
quickly. Surely, neither side would
willingly sacrifice their young for
some fields of oil and a strategic
port? But we were wrong. We
underestimated the Soviet greed
and also the resolve of a people
yearning for freedom.
Bi-weekly video chats gave way to a
weekly call. Before long it was an
occasional lazy text. Finally, a
message, at the end of January:
“They need me to stay.” Then
nothing. Soon it will be a whole year
that he’s been gone.
The MS Nordstjernen cuts through
the night, bound for Svalbard, and I
stare out at the light of the stars.
When I reach Svalbard, my Swedish
colleagues, Clare, Leah, Julio, and I
will document the mysteries of the
polar night. Especially the
variations to the krill and
phytoplankton, brought on by the
shedding of the light. After all this
time in the Arctic Circle, I finally
feel like I am off on a proper
adventure.
I try not to think of Trond removing
his headlamp and reclining in the
Gruve 7 breakroom next to the coal
mining tunnels, miles below the
Arctic mountains, risking his life
more and more with each day
underground. It would be
lunchtime now in Adventdalen.
Trond would have a thick coat of
black dust on his forehead. Under
his gloves, his hands would be
doused in the dark soot, the calling
card of the dark lords of the mine
shafts. Trond wouldn’t bother
washing up or wiping his forehead
before unwrapping his sandwich.
He is a true Norwegian, through
and through. Savages. The lot of
them.
I prefer the polar night. A perpetual
full moon hugs the horizon
transiting in a perpetual loop like a
beacon from a distant lighthouse,
circling the outpost. The blue light
of the afternoon fades to velvety
black after midday. And on the ship,
the seas sleep soundly. Kinetic
energy accumulates all around us. A
limitless supply of ancient sunlight,
stored like grain in underground
silos. Just below the concealing ice.
90 billion gallons of oil. A third of
the world’s natural gas. Coal basins
salt the earthen caves; pressure
cookers compact the carbon in the
leaves of ancient ferns. And at every
level, life thrives. From the ocean
bottom to the mountain peaks.
But we marine biologists are
concerned with the most alluring
mysteries. Krill eyeballs. Sensitive
enough to see only by the light of
the moon. The werewolf effect.
Where all living things become
more active and restless under the
light of the full moon. Making sleep
a scarce commodity during the
whole season. Diel vertical
migration. The magnetism of
marine life being pulled upward by
the light of the sun. Light. Like
sprinkles of fish food from the hand
of God, those nurturing rays call
forth the phytoplankton and krill.
And beneath the ice shelves, a
strange world of algae, bacteria,
plankton, and swarms of shrimp-
like arthropods feast on the energy
locked in the melting ice. Stored
sunlight, and its byproducts, locked
in a frozen lunch box, churned and
warmed by the rolling seas. The
light banquet above ceases
completely during the polar night—
leaving the upper levels of the
ecosystem dark and void. Only the
icy dance under the sea continues,
unimpeded, unaware of the
nocturnal slumber above.
Amazingly, nature finds a way.
Animals buried deep under the sea
begin to emit their own light, like
floating mermaids, carrying their
own lanterns, searching the depths
for a fresh meal, or a companion.
Anything that sustains. There is also
polar gigantism and marine snow.
The Ice Dragonfish has anti-freeze
in its blood to keep it from freezing.
This too is surprising and
miraculous.
I imagine myself growing gigantic,
my skin radiating light, my blood
adjusting to the ice in my veins. At
last, growing so large that I am a
beacon that can even be seen from
miles below the Norwegian
permafrost, where Trond toils
silently in the darkness of the void.
The MS Nordstjernen docks at
Svalbard and we pack our bags
quietly, fuel ourselves with bitter
coffee and sweet cream, and
prepare to go ashore.
***
“Hallå,” Clare says. “Are you ready
for a hyttetur?” That means a cabin
trip. We will be traveling by
snowmobile, over the sea ice, out to
a remote cabin in Sveagruva for
some crew bonding and cross-
country skiing out in the
mountainous moonscape, aided by
headlamps and plenty of layers, and
a healthy pack full of booze.
Clare smiles through the biting cold
and revs the motor of her
snowmobile, blasting her
headlamps to repel the enveloping
blanket of darkness. Clare hands
back a cup full of flour tortilla-
wrapped sausages as if she knew
how hungry I would be.
“Dani, Framät,” she says to her
Siberian Husky. Dani hops to his
feet, from where he is lying in the
snow.
“Hey, ‘framät!’“ Clare repeats.
Dani begins racing along by the side
of the snowmobile, panting happily,
his breath coming out in clouds that
he pierces with his gait, and which
break in pieces and trail behind him
like the exhaust of a locomotive. We
traverse the cold ridge to Clare’s
cabin for supplies, grinding through
the fresh powder as a flurry of snow
falls and coats our ski goggles. It is
not even a mile away. Clare has the
stove ready, stuffed with chords of
wood. And we drink tall mugs of
coffee and recline in warm blankets,
in her oceanfront cabin, as the small
cabin warms with fresh heat.
“It is beautiful,” I say.
“Wait until you see Sveagruva,” she
says. “Det är bättre än himlen.”
“Better than heaven.”
“Vänta och se,” she says—wait and
see.
A few hours later, we have the
trailers for our snowmobiles
packed, and we are ready for our
adventure.
Compared with Svalbard, the
coastline route to Sveagruva
is terra nullius. No man’s land. We
wouldn’t dare venture out in the
polar night without GPS and
Garmin inReach Sat Phones in tow
in case of emergency. And rifles, in
case of a run-in with polar bears.
Glaciers border the route. Around
noon, when the blue light casts the
landscape in an eerie hue, we stop
at cavernous ice caves carved in the
glacial housing of thousand-year-
old ice. If only Trond could see this.
“Titta där,” Clare says, Look
there, pointing at what looks like a
polar bear den. It is nestled under a
ridge of roots from Dwarf Birch and
Mountain Sorrel, burrowing in the
mossy permafrost, framing the den
with walls of living iron.
The polar bear peaks her head out
from her maternity den, her clipped
white ears checking for sounds of
movement.
“Let’s call her Nadia,” I say.
Nadia sniffs, gimbaling her head
about as she picks up a familiar
scent. Nadia smells a wolverine far
in the distance. Her dark black eyes
scan the line of the horizon for
other dangers. Finding none, she
emerges, and helps herself to a
snow bath, rolling about in the
frozen snow of the playground
outside the den. She yawns,
revealing her long canine teeth, and
stretches, grabbing the ground with
her sharp claws and black foot pads,
and slowly connecting with the
earth, reclining on the snow, rolling
over onto her back. Two young pups
begin to crawl out and play fight,
scuttling over to the mother bear
and feeding from her exposed
nipples.
“Look at that!” I say and blurt out,
“Trond would die if he could see
this.”
“You haven’t spoken to him, have
you?” Clare asks.
“Oh, no. Of course not.”
“Att försvara ett fel är att fela igen,”
Clare says.
“Once bitten, twice shy,” I say,
nodding.
***
Out here in the icy valleys of the
moonlike cliffs and eerie glacial
rivers, the sheer expanse of the
landscape, immense, and imposing
is a thing of wonder.
Nature’s imagination is vast. Almost
as vast as the reaches of space. And
her colossal moods seem big
enough to swallow galaxies.
Dazzling displays of light and dark
are her trademark. In all her
mercurial palettes. Polar night, for
instance. You have to seep in the
emancipating darkness long enough
to appreciate being pulled out into
the overbearing light.
Dark and cold. They go together like
warm coffee and cold cream. One
hides all mundane things, leaving
only the magical. The other strongly
warns of nature’s power and
cautions against overindulging.
After all, all magical things are
deadly. Polar bears. Ice drifts.
Plunging temperatures. Packs of
wolves. The reorienting wind that
blows where it wills. Loneliness.
Regret. For every magical night
filled with the Northern lights is an
evening where the seas hurl daggers
the size of Buicks at the land and
send icy gusts with murderous
intent after every creature that
crawls, slithers, or walks.
In the darkness, though, we can see
what is never visible in the light.
The light of a thousand distant
suns. They blink their celestial eyes
like eyelids, squinting to catch a
glimpse of an oasis in an
unimaginably vast desert of ice.
When polar night descends, the
Nordic country blows away the sun
like a dandelion blown out of a
child’s hand. Then a month later, it
returns. Blue twilight is a reminder
that days are real. A long sunrise
without a sun. Soft and pink.
Painting the world in cold pastels.
We shudder at the feeling that
comes when the sun at last returns,
anticipating its coming; knowing
that it is like seeing the sun for the
first time in your whole life.
After what seems like an eternity in
my own thoughts, clinging to Clare’s
coat and hugging her for warmth,
we arrive at the cabin, which stands
enormous against the landscape.
Leah and Julio have traveled ahead,
and are busy dusting off the drifts of
snow, filling the water tank, hauling
in dry chords of wood for the
furnace, and readying our sanctuary
for a long weekend.
***
I look at my cell phone. The little
green bubble says, “I know you are
over this. I don’t know what I did or
what happened. But I worry about
you and hope you are well, my love.
You are thought of… often.” Three
weeks ago. Long enough to stop
hoping for a response. But one
never knows.
Like the sun’s rays that seem lost
forever in the long travail of the
polar night, things that feel lost
forever can return suddenly and
unceremoniously, crying out that
they were never gone at all, but
always there just out of reach, only
inches below your line of sight,
sending out diffuse blue signals as
evidence of their constancy.
The question hangs pregnant over
the proceedings, and I know it is
coming before she asks.
Clare hands me a mug of hot cocoa
that Julio prepared for us, complete
with floating marshmallows, as we
crowd inside and unpack our bags.
“Kommer du att stanna till våren?”
she says. Will I be staying for the
spring? That is the question. But I
haven’t decided.
“Do you think I should stay?”
“But of course.” She smiles with her
teeth glistening in the blue twilight.
“You must, bebis. You are part of
our Grabbarna now.” I guess I am
part of the gang. Science nerds gone
Ernest Shackleton.
We have found so much out about
the world below the ice. Yet there is
so much more to discover. How do
the Krill find phytoplankton? How
do those little energy packets
survive in the sunless reaches
throughout the polar night, with
nothing to nurture them in the cold
season? How does life continue in
darkness? How do the winds of the
jet stream re-circulate energy into
the Arctic realm?
This is a true hyttetur. No
plumbing, no running water, and no
electricity. Leah lights candles
throughout the cabin. Julio fires up
the generator, which we will use
sparingly for heating water. And
also stores little propane tanks for
the camp stoves. Leah comes
outside in her down jacket with a
bottle of Italian Grappa.
“Skål,” Leah says, passing the bottle
around. I take a long swig and the
fire of the burning liquid coats my
throat and warms my chest,
reminding me that there is still
some life within me. Leah starts
blasting some EDM beats which
echo off of the canyons of ice
chortling through the Arctic valley.
I was going through my e-mails
while we played Monopoly with
hand-crafted Harry Potter figures.
And I was thinking of Trond.
Worrying. As usual. Then I saw an
e-mail from Trond. I debated for an
hour whether or not to open it but
ultimately gave in.
“I don’t know why I’m writing you
this. Why I am writing now.
Kongsfjorden is different than I
remember. It seems that everything
has changed. Reindeer sleep by the
trams, out on the graded snowbank,
which is pitched so they are
shielded from the wind. I never
noticed before.
We gathered today in Fruene to talk
about what happened to Peter. ‘We
who live in the north in darkness,
we know how much the light
means,’ said Pastor Skaaheim at
Peter’s mass. Sigurd, Jakob, and
Luka were down with me in the
tunnel when it happened. We met
with Mayor Olsen and he
represented Peter’s family in the
union negotiations. He used to be
our spokesman before he became
Mayor, you know. At $45 a ton, it
hardly makes sense anymore to
mine coal. Looks like the Greta
Thunberg brigade has won at last.
Congratulations. We submit.
This is how it happened. We had
cleared out of the mine for the day.
Right in the middle of the polar
night. But the glacial melt had been
flooding the mineshaft. It was so
bad that the conveyor belt was
going on the fritz. Peter stayed back
in the shaft with a pump to clear the
flood water out. Just like that, in an
instant, the South wall caved in. An
avalanche of rock collapsed on him.
We spent the night with an
excavator trying to find him in the
dark. We tried TNT. Wedges.
Everything. We never found his
body. It is now three days his body
has disappeared underneath the
frozen rock. We’ve re-opened the
tunnel, but search and rescue is still
looking for Peter’s remains. It is
almost like he disappeared into thin
air. I keep thinking, it could have
been me. And we would have never
spoken again. Anyway. I don’t know
why I’m writing you. Say a prayer
for Peter.”
“Skål,” Leah says again, seeing the
dower look on my face.
And she passes the Grappa bottle
around the table, where
Dumbledore has just passed Snape
to buy Park Place. I take a long gulp.
“Whoa cowboy!” Leah says. But I
need a moment.
I walk out into the polar night, my
crampons crunching the deep snow.
I gaze at the belligerent moon which
stands at the far end of the world,
taunting me. At once so close I feel
that I could reach out and touch
her. And still so far away that the
incalculable distance and icy
traverse, are borderline infinities.
Not unreachable, but damn near to.
Like the past.
And right here and now, I finally
understand the polar night. I can’t
return to the Kongsfjorden I’d
known with Trond. And Trond can’t
stop being a miner. All that has
happened has irreversibly changed
us, like the creatures adapting to the
abiding polar night. I take out my
phone and write back the only true
thing I can think of. “I want to see
you. I am in Sveagruva for a
hyttetur. Nothing is the same
without you.”
And at that very moment, a small
crown of yellow against the horizon
displaces the blue twilight and the
sun returns.