Crying about the sun: An ode to my first six months living in Sweden

Anyone who has ever survived a Swedish winter, no matter if they are Swedish or not, will tell you, “It’s not the cold, it’s the darkness.” Before experiencing Swedish winter myself, I found this statement quite confusing. A New Yorker used to cold weather, I had moved to Stockholm in August, and was bracing myself for a winter that would be slightly colder and longer than in New York. Everyone fixated on “darkness”, but Stockholm is not so far north that there would be no daylight at all. So what was all the fuss?

As it turned out, I would become well-acquainted with the fuss about darkness. So here’s a reflection and a journey, through the beginning months of Swedish winter and my particular experience navigating a new life in Sweden, a place that one must acclimate to in myriad forms.

“Winter is coming”: A chronology of decreasing sunshine in Sweden

When I moved to Sweden in early August, the days were long: the sun would rise around 4:30 a.m. and wouldn’t set until 9:00 p.m. August became September and then October, each day shortening by approximately six minutes. I acquired vitamin D supplements, ubiquitous in Sweden. Then came November, and daylight saving time ended at the beginning of the month. Suddenly afternoon became evening, with the sun setting before 4:00 p.m. I wasn’t bothered by the afternoon darkness; if anything, it was a curiosity. Wow, I thought, in New York we complained about it being dark by 5:00 p.m., this puts things in perspective. I also stumbled across a new challenge: morning darkness. Not only did the sun set earlier, but is also rose later each morning, and by late November it didn’t rise until after 8:00 a.m. My alarm would ring in the morning as I opened my eyes to nighttime, groggy and disoriented at the start of the day.

With the November darkness came the November overcast. It would be overcast sometimes for weeks at a time, for the sun to then emerge momentarily, maybe for an hour, maybe for an afternoon, before disappearing back behind the clouds. I’ve heard mixed numbers about the total amount of sunshine in Stockholm in November 2023: some say that during the entire month, there were a mere 20 hours of sunshine; others say 13 hours. Needless to say, the numbers are staggeringly low. Accordingly, there is general consensus among Swedes that November is the worst month of the year.

By December, I started to feel different. A little more tired. A little less enthusiastic. Moodier. Sadder. The slightest bit of bad news felt like a tremendous weight. I had a harder time getting off the couch, and out of the house, whenever I was not obligated. I continued to practice good habits, which conveniently help fight depression: eating nourishing meals, exercising regularly, and dancing, my great passion, a few times a week. Some days it felt like going to the gym was the only thing keeping me afloat, yet it took all my energy to get myself to go. The overcast continued, only now it was frequently accompanied by showers of snow and ice.

Every once in a while the sun would break free, and I would suit up in two pairs of pants, three sweaters, a scarf, hat, gloves, and winter jacket, to step outside and feel, momentarily, the feeling of sunlight on my nose, cheeks, and chin. Temperatures were almost always below freezing. Suddenly, I understood why Swedes have the tendency to “sunflower”: to stand facing the sun with their eyes closed, sometimes right in the middle of a sidewalk. The sun, particularly in winter, is just that rare. I also found, in the few moments the sun would surface, that I wanted to take its picture, capturing an elusive sight as if it were a double rainbow, or a shooting star.

By the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, the sun rose in Stockholm at 8:45 a.m., and set at 2:45 p.m. A whole six hours of daylight, and again, completely overcast.

The next day, I got on an airplane and flew home to the United States for the holidays, a few days in New York followed by a week in Miami. When my parents and I landed in Miami the first evening, the sun had already set for the day. The next day, it rained without stopping. The following day, the sun emerged for a few brief, glorious moments, before hiding behind a sea of gray once again. The next day was completely overcast, and chilly. By that afternoon, the sun looked like it might emerge, maybe. I made my way to a good sunset spot, to see if I could manage a nice view and to feel a few rays of sunlight on my skin before sunset. I waited for an hour, but the clouds didn’t break.

As I walked to rejoin my parents following that failed attempt at sunbathing, my thoughts began to race, the same thoughts that I had held in since arriving in Miami. Overcast, again. It’s been three days, and barely any sun. Only four days left in Miami. Clock’s ticking. What if the sun doesn’t come out at all? And underpinning all of that: if I’m feeling this crazy now, how the fuck am I supposed to survive the rest of Swedish winter?

Back with my parents, they asked me what I had been up to. “I was trying to see if the sun would come out,” I said. “It didn’t.” And then: “This is like a torture. It’s been three days, and the sun is just not coming out!” And I lost it, and burst into tears.

My mother immediately came over and wrapped her arms around me. My father, baffled, surveyed us with quiet compassion. My parents exchanged a look, hopefully only mildly alarmed. Perhaps we had all underestimated my mental health.

I let myself be held by my mother as I cried about something completely out of my control. Finally, I took a deep breath, and wiped my eyes.

“Well. This is new. I’ve never cried about the sun before.”

And I couldn’t help but start laughing, because it was true, and illogical, and frankly, weird. But I guess there’s something special about the new experiences we can have that surprise us.

The next morning, and throughout my remaining four days, the sun beamed down over Miami. I parked myself in the sunshine, doing little else than soaking it up like a sponge. I soon felt more like myself than I had in quite some time. My blissful sunbathing continued pretty much until the moment that I got on an airplane and flew back to my new home, Stockholm.

The (Swedish and personal) landscape underneath the clouds

Complex situations – like humans being humans – are rarely the result of one singular event. So while seasonal affective disorder is absolutely a thing (and quite common in Sweden, surprise surprise), we can’t just chock up my crying about the sun to seasonal depression, because that would ignore the rest of the context of my first six months in Sweden.

I don’t know how it’s gone for others, but in spite of moving to Sweden being entirely my choice (and I recognize the immense privilege that I have to be able to choose to move to Sweden for my career), getting established here has been challenging, and a bigger adjustment than I anticipated. Swedish systems are difficult, bureaucratic, and oftentimes illogical, and doing things that should be simple, like going to the doctor or opening a bank account, are long, cumbersome processes. (Case in point: it’s been six months and I have still not been able to open a bank account. Fingers crossed it happens in early 2024.)

This societal adjustment comes on top of a big social adjustment, too; coming from a place known for its friendly and open people, the change to Swedish social norms – particularly Stockholm’s social norms – has been significant. An extrovert who has suddenly found myself in a country where strangers don’t make eye contact or small talk, and aggressively ignoring people in public spaces is the status quo, a large part of the everyday interactions that make me feel connected to a place and its people are absent here, further leading to my feeling of being a fish out of water in Sweden.

And, in spite of moving to Sweden for a very positive and exciting reason, to attend my dream master’s program, it’s a big change, in and of itself. Being back in school after nine years in the workforce requires a certain recalibration of how to think and problem solve. It’s also brought up new, existential questions about my future work: what I might do next, where in the world I will do it, and how to best position myself to drive change. My master’s program has been an absolutely enriching experience so far, and attending this program is one of the best decisions I’ve made. But it’s still a big adjustment.

I had been told that it would take some time to feel fully like myself in Sweden. But what that actually meant, in practice, was hard to internalize. I felt like I should have been more comfortable, in spite of Sweden’s tricky bureaucracy. And I felt like I should have been more comfortable, in spite of the baseline social conditions being what they are here. And I felt like I should have been more comfortable, in spite of being in an entirely new mental space, challenged to think about things in new ways, with big implications for whatever will come next in my career.

Until finally, all of these mental shoulds and discomforts that I had disregarded for months piled up, and there was finally one big, overarching, physiological discomfort that I just could not ignore: that when you’ve spent your whole life accustomed to certain levels of sunshine and natural vitamin D, the change to extremely low or non-existent levels is an actual, physical shock to the system. And it culminated for me in Miami. Not just, oh no, the sun is not coming out. But also, embedded: will I find a sense of comfort in Sweden? Will I feel at home here? Will I be able to be myself, fully, mentally and physically?

But what’s amazing, and ironic, is that even the realization that it’s okay to not be entirely okay is comforting. And while there are things as far out of my control as the sun coming out from behind the clouds, at least being honest with myself about the reality of adjusting to life in Sweden and the challenges it poses, makes it feel just a bit more navigable.

After a few rejuvenating days in the sun in Miami, I was able to return to Stockholm feeling, in addition to physically recharged, a sense of optimism about my life here in Sweden that I hadn’t felt during the previous months. Riding the Tunnelbana on the way back to my apartment, with the sounds of ambient Swedish around me for the first time in almost two weeks, I felt a sense of familiarity in those unfamiliar sounds. And being back feels like a new opportunity to widen my social network, get as much out of my master’s program as I can, and be a little more courageous about practicing my abysmal Swedish. Ah yes, and I also acquired a sun lamp for mental health, which I am now using daily.

And now that it’s January, anyone who has ever survived a Swedish winter, no matter if they are Swedish or not, is no longer saying, “It’s not the cold, it’s the darkness.” Now, what they’re saying is: “You made it through the most difficult part. From here, each day is only going to get longer, and brighter.”