Summer Solstice

June 21, 2014

Music of the Sphere.

During the couple of weeks before and after the summer solstice – June 21 in the northern hemisphere – the sun barely dips below the horizon near the latitudes of the High North. If the weather gods are on your side, you get to enjoy a soft, lingering symphony of honeyed light – this quality of light you will never see in the lower latitudes – as the giant sphere takes its own sweet time touching down.

Last year I witnessed just such a celestial performance on a very still night in north Iceland. I located myself here, at the junction where the fjords Skagafjörður and Siglufjörður meet the Greenland Sea not far from the Arctic Circle. These are moments that inscribe themselves permanently in your memory.