Here’s how to sleep in a region where the sun rises in April and sets in August.
Cecilia Blomdahl remembers the day she arrived on Svalbard, an island in the Swedish archipelago in the heart of the Arctic Ocean. In 2015, she took a boat to work in a restaurant with friends. At that time of year, the Arctic Circle is constantly plunged into the silence of the night, which is what made her decide to stay on the island and settle there. Now the 34-year-old woman lives between the North Pole and Sweden, where she grew up. With her partner, she lives in a small town of 2,400 inhabitants and shares her daily life as a resident of the far north on YouTube.
In his videosthe photographer films herself walking with her dog, on her boat in the middle of the glaciers or while shopping, but it is above all the way of dealing with the climatic conditions of Svalbard that fascinates her 800,000 subscribers. Between the snowstorms, and the sun that either stays down or rises for several months in a row, it is enough to make you lose your mind. So to sleep well when the sun is at its zenith, she has developed an infallible method that she inherits from her Scandinavian origins.
In one of her latest videos, already viewed more than 855,000 times, Cecilia Blomdahl explains how she and her partner sleep during a day that lasts almost six months. And her techniques are unconventional. The first is to have her own duvet. The young woman shares her bed with her partner but not her sheets. She explains that this is quite common in Sweden and in all northern European countries and this for several reasons.
According to her, Swedes are particularly attached to the notion of personal space, even in bed. But the most important reason is that not everyone has the same preferences for sleeping. She explains that unlike her partner, she likes to sleep cool. In the same way that one chooses one’s sleeping bag, she opted for a duvet with a lower heat level.
The second technique she uses comes from her mother and consists of airing her sheets. Despite temperatures often around -25°C, Cecilia Blomdahl spreads her duvet on her terrace a few hours before going to sleep, every day of the year. Thanks to the dry wind from the Arctic Circle, her sheets do not become damp; on the contrary, the cold, according to her, disinfects and deodorizes them. The young woman has always thought that the whole planet did this. She understands that for people living in tropical environments it is more complicated, but for her it is the most important thing for sleeping better. Especially since it gives the sheets a particularly pleasant fresh smell which, according to her, helps improve the quality of sleep.
More logically, the third rule is to cut yourself off as much natural light as possible, by using blackout curtains, lowering your blinds or putting on a night mask. Sleep comes more quickly when you are plunged into darkness. Since she lives in a place where the day lasts from April 19 to August 26, the young woman is never woken up by the day, she needs an alarm clock every day but instead of a phone ringing that makes you fall out of bed, she opts for more natural sounds like birdsong, or the sound of the ocean. But the hardest part, according to her, is not waking up but “forcing” yourself to go to bed because enjoying the sun’s rays at 11 p.m. is rather tempting.