Climate change isn’t always about a warming world — it also disrupts the common cycles that govern the cold fronts, particularly in the more heavily populated northern hemisphere. The closer you live to the northpole (as is the case with Finland at a latitude of 64° 0' 0”), the more likely you will be affected by disruptions to the polar vortex, itself consisting of two distinct parts, the stratospheric polar vortex above, and the tropospheric polar vortex below, underneath which lies frigid Siberian air masses.
Any weakening of, or disruption of the vortices causes these Arctic air masses to push southwards with typical freezing havoc ensuing.
The phenomenon first made news headlines back in January 2019 when a mass of frigid arctic air pushed towards the equator and enveloped large parts of North America plunging temperatures to as low as -50 Celsius in the Mid-West. Pictures of frozen alligators in the Everglades and Florida orange groves covered in snow also made for great copy and confusion among a population more accustomed to sweltering than freezing.
If I had to choose between the two extremes, I would most likely opt for the cold, because one can insulate against it more easily than one can cool down in an extended heatwave. That said, winter conditions take some bearing, and people from more southern climes might struggle with the knock-out combination of ice and darkness we enjoy on a regular basis here in the Nordics.
Cold is a punishment. Siberia is the teacher, as the saying goes here in Finland in reference to the gulags where many ended their lives in brutal conditions. It wasn’t difficult for the 14th Century Italian poet, Dante to conjure regions of hell in his Divine Comedy as cold and dank. Within its nine concentric rings of misery, the coldest places are reserved for the most miserable sinners — the gluttons who wander in a misery of slush and ice, whilst the innermost ring, reserved for the worst sinner of all, Satan, is distinctly barren and frozen.
I think of this because, outside right now, it is colder than my freezer at -22 Celsius and at times like these, particularly at the start of another year, it concentrates the mind, allowing for introspection and pause. Sure enough, it’s a winter wonderland but one best viewed inside from a window or the lid illustration of a well-stocked tin of chocolates.
Somehow or other, that Victorian landscape of icicled eaves and snowy roofs described by Dickens in his novella, A Christmas Carol holds the same level of grinding bleakness that freezes the homeless sheltering in doorways in the London of the 21st century. Freezing cold also captured the imagination of Hans Christian Anderson, whose dark children’s story, the Little Match Girl, describes the disparity of wealth and poverty in a bleak cityscape on New Year’s Eve.
Barefoot and bareheaded, the freezing child strikes her matches for sale to keep warm and briefly illuminates fever dreams of joy and happiness before her grandmother comes down as an angel and lifts her soul to heaven. More prosaically, her frozen corpse (albeit smiling) is found the next morning.
Cold is almost invariably linked to poverty, want and wickedness in writers’ imaginations. If not that, then a grim reality to be endured; an existential crisis that sorts out survivors from the victims and the dead as per Jack London’s depiction of the Klondike in the 19th century in tales like White Fang, and The Call of the Wild.
The hard cold I am talking about (described specifically by the Finns as ‘pakkanen’) is silent, unremitting, and relentless. On such stark days, with clear skies above, one can feel the bleak isolation of outer space touching down upon the earth withering everything within its grasp.
During such times, cabin fever really is a thing. Even from the hygge warmth of your own house, there is a feeling of claustrophobia. Certainly, going outside is possible (and with dogs, obligatory) with the proper clothes but the cold still grips you, biting at your face, eyes exuding tears while breathing the dry air becomes laborious. Inside the house, the air deprived of any extra moisture makes clothes and hair crackle with static electricity.
It becomes a closeted waiting game when the deep cold relents, and life can return to some kind of normality.
Winter is the longest season of the year here in Finland and I would argue that it is the season that defines the character of the Finnish nation for those very reasons. The Winter War fought against the Soviets in 1939 to 1940 was also a defining moment for this nation and one fought valiantly in the bleakest of winters with temperatures dropping below — 40 Celsius. Much of the success by the Finns was forged in the knowledge that life must continue despite these extreme conditions and driven by the kind of forward planning and grit that it demands.
Looking back into prehistory, the world was once enveloped in glaciers miles deep. Viewed from space, the earth resembled a cosmic snowball. Despite our successful colonization of the earth, the last glacial period reduced populations to the thousands in Europe with atomized groups as few as 20 to 30 people moving over the whole of Europe as a single territory. Basically, it was a crapshoot if the human species could survive at all, given such a small number and a heavily bottlenecked genetic pool of people isolated across huge geographies.
One theory posits that these small groups dispersed and regrouped over thousands of years, with certain numbers dying of starvation before the dwindling northern populations were boosted by neolithic farmers arriving from Asia and the near east, where the climate was better.
In the winter of 2022, the Russian administration with the sense of entitlement only great nations seem to wield, saw fit to invade a sovereign country believing at the time, that Ukraine could be taken in days, if not weeks. The first weeks were perilous, and the violence of the invasion was impacted by an underlying threat that any attempt to stop them would result in a nuclear standoff. This is still an option, unfortunately, and one which would herald a new ice age, the nuclear winter — a frozen radioactive inferno more devilish than anything Dante could have imagined.
In the meantime, the Ukrainians have been given a full measure of suffering at their hands and that of Father Frost — the Russian version of Santa Claus. Thrown out into the cold, the displaced know it is every bit as effective at causing death as bullets and missiles. Certainly, the Russians know this as they purposefully attack Ukraine’s power grid for a second year. Taken together, cold, war and privation complement each other in misery.
I dread a future where war spreads and we are all cast out into the monstrous winter conditions now upon us. In the open, few would survive for long and for those that do, desperation and want would drive many to commit acts unspeakable in present society. The veneer that coats our civilization is a thin ice upon which we skate but on we go, one ear listening for the ominous crack, eyes fixed upon the event horizon.
