I could not figure out what title to give this post, so I have baptized it to be “Modern languages”.

It is November. In northern Sweden, winter puts the “dark” in the phrase “the dark of the year”. There is usually no snow on the ground, and not even the beautiful sun can reach around the earth to help us. Daylight shrivels to four hours, left to manage itself between sunrise and sunset.

Our summer light is fickle and vindictive. It can be cold or warm, baking us at 30 degrees Celsius or sending us shivering into our fleeces at 18 degrees. In contrast, the winter darkness is a known control, reliably blanketing the earth every year, regardless of the weather. Winter promises that you shall be cold. It delivers to the earth the natural, freezing state of the universe. It always presents itself as the blinding darkness of a light freshly extinguished. It will never lie or disappoint. How can you not love it?