Life in a Northern Town, Not Really on Purpose

I came to this city for practical reasons: the job was here; it paid better than the other options; the cost of living was reasonable given its industrialism and harsh climate. I never expected to like it.

It’s so far north that the people sound Swedish and the sun never really rises in the winter — it arcs itself about halfway up and then swings horizontally along the southern horizon and sets by 4:30. This past winter we went 11 straight days in which the temperature broke zero for a total of three hours combined.

My students go ice fishing, like, for real. Ice fishing.

The coffee is fantastic. There’s something called a “Kringle,” a Scandinavian pastry, and I’m still trying to figure out how I survived so long without it, without even knowing what it was. Imagine a fruit Danish and a glazed donut having a baby that looks like a pretzel the size of a large pizza; that’s a Kringle.

There’s water — or ice, depending upon the season — everywhere. I now live along one of the widest rivers I’ve ever seen.

For most of my life I assumed that working rivers were a thing of past, a thing of southern novels and miniature railroad displays. But as I write this there is a Dutch boat (name: Arubaborg) across the river, and it has been unloading [something] onto piles of…