From now on, for the next six months, the days get shorter.

Midsommar i Sverige! 55 years ago, I saw the midnight sun in Kiruna, and wished I could have it all year round.

Somewhere around Tromsø. It was glorious and unsettling at the same time.

The train ride from Stockholm to Kiruna already seemed to take forever, and I just couldn’t face four more hours to Narvik. At the time, I hadn’t started studying Swedish yet, so I felt a little odd, even though most people knew English rather well. But that just made me feel worse. I started college that fall, and immediately enrolled in a Swedish course. My professor was from Uppsala, and was a brilliant teacher. She spoke only Swedish from day one, and took care at first to only use Swedish words that resembled English words. Luckily, that meant almost half of them. It turned out that if your native language is English, Swedish is incredibly easy to learn if you have a competent teacher. After one year of college Swedish, I returned to Sweden and never had to use English there again. I never made it as far north as Kiruna again. My professor said they spoke a weird dialect of Swedish up there, not even getting into Finnish or the language of the Somer people (the Lapplanders). But I didn’t know the language yet, so I never knew what to listen for when I was there.

I’ve been using Duolingo to learn Norwegian but I look forward to taking formal classes.

By “Somer” people do you mean the Sami or is this different?

A little more darkness every day, crickets at night, autumn harvests and moons coming. There is no coziness in summer and coziness is everything.

I worship the sun, but I don't pray to the sun. On the other hand, nor do I pray to Joe Pesci.
George is on his own with that one. Well, he would be if he were still alive, anyway.

A relief when it goes to bed earlier and earlier. The moon is a lot more interesting!

I love the longer darker days and the move toward hygge in general.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygge

i was reading from your link and ...

To you and yours!

Today is our 51st wedding anniversary.

I suppose you can say that for anniversaries as well as birthdays ...

In Seattle!!!

It’s quite the event!!!

🎉🥳🎊🎈