When we first arrived in Nuuk it was only two weeks after the winter solstice. Our flight arrived in the mid afternoon twilight and, once settled into our empty apartment, I took the bus into town to my new workplace. Out the window, streetlights glowed in the darkness. In the distance, the mountain carved a dark line through a starry sky. When I arrived at the nine-storey Nuuk Centre, lit with bright windows in which orange Christmas stars still shone, I smiled at what I thought was an artistic snowy mountainscape on its facade. It was, in fact, just snow trapped in the metal grating that wrapped the building.
Back then, the darkness was heavy. The nights were long. The air was so dry that I woke desperate for water, barely able to swallow. My skin felt papery. Lying in bed, I listened to the ghostly song of the cold wind, whistling through the air conditioning ducts. In the dark mornings, I struggled to rise and begin the day that seemed still far distant.
Now it’s different. The winter solstice has passed once again, the shortest day of perhaps the longest year. Now, I wake bright in the dark mornings, mornings that, to me, are as welcome and beautiful as any other. I open the blinds and smile at the snow, glowing under the streetlights, at the soft flakes falling, and I look forward to the blue-grey twilit day. The years have passed and Greenland has crept into my veins.
