How to Use a Norwegian Mindset to Get Through the Long, Dark Winter
Research explains why Norwegian people don’t suffer as much as expected given their tough winters.
Why would you ever purposefully go to one of the darkest, coldest places on Earth, especially during wintertime? Conventional wisdom tells us that we’re like plants, thriving in the warmth and sun.
And yet, that’s exactly what Kari Leibowitz, social psychology PhD student at Stanford and former U.S.-Norway Fulbright Scholar did. She packed her bags to go to the northernmost university in the world, north even of the Arctic circle — the University of Tromsø, situated on a tiny island the size of Manhattan, with about 70,000 residents, during the coldest, darkest, and some would say most miserable time of the year.
Why? Because researchers have discovered that the residents of northern Norway, despite being geographically positioned to experience the worst winters that Earth has to offer, actually suffer much less from wintertime gloom than that conventional wisdom would lead us to expect.
“Residents of northern Norway seem able to avoid much of the wintertime suffering experienced elsewhere — including, paradoxically, in warmer, brighter, more southern locations,” Kari Leibowitz wrote via the…
