Scandinavia and the World

Well where does that leave Canada (specifically Quebec and the Francophones of New Brunswick)?

In Scandinavian noir literature in particular it tends to be a form of social commentary, looking a little bit past the shine of the Nordic societies to see all the blemishes.

In the rest of Scandinavian literature, idk. We like miserable fiction.

It's cold as balls and you get endless nights in winter, I'm not surprised.

Well, you also get nightless nights in the summer. I'm actually rather liking the dark hours again, after a couple of months when it didn't get dark at all. At the end of the year, we'll get to the days when it's barely light out at all for even one moment in the day. I know that that causes problems for some people, but there you go. At least it's easier to fall asleep at night if it isn't light outside.

The Equinox (last Thursday) was 12-and-12 day and night for you too, right?

Honestly, this is a time in the year when the amount of light during the day changes quite quickly (or it feels like it does), so to me, it felt like a month ago, there was still no darkness at all (but there definitely was) and now, I get the feeling that it's already dark at 5 PM or so - which isn't true, either. So asking me is going to get you what it feels like but I don't actually pay enough attention it to to notice when a given ratio of light to dark is reached.

Well, in three months you go from equal light and dark to sunless days, so I think it's fair to say it changes quickly. Latest the sun ever sets round here is 8:30PM or so on the solstice.

I think this is also a thing that varies even within a given Nordic country because three of them are quite long in the North-South axis. (Those would be Norway, Sweden, and Finland.) I live maybe a bit north of the mid point of Finland on the X axis (and very far East in the Y), so my experience is going to be different from someone living in Lapland or Helsinki.

It's the same with the weather, too. The place where I now live is 100 km south of where I grew up, and even in that short a distance, you sometimes see pretty major changes in the weather during transitional periods between the seasons (usually, there's still snow in the north while there's none in the south, or maybe the trees are already in autumn colours in the north when in the south it's still all green).

I bet it gets darker where I grew up a bit earlier in the day than it does here.

Oh, I know about latitudinally-variant countries. I'm Chilean. Last summer I went from the driest desert in the world on my vacation to the temperate rainforests in the south.

If I'm not mistaken, though, even the southernmost point of the American continent (and consequently, of anywhere other than Antarctica) is much closer to the Equator than Scandinavia is. I think we get like, four-hour nights in the far austral region in summer.

Yeah, you're closer to the equator. And yeah, Chile is longer than any of the Nordic countries.

You also get warmer days than we do, as a consequence. Where I live, a typical summer day is somewhere between ~15 - 30 degrees Celsius, with temperatures over 25 or so considered quite hot, and over 30 is enough to make people wish it would snow for a bit. (Not me, though - I hate snow, and much prefer the summer, even if it's too warm for comfort.) 35 is very rare.

On the other side, a typical winter day is somewhere between ~-15 - -30 degrees, with temperatures below -25 considered quite cold (but still common), and at below -30 even the winter-loving Finns will tell you they miss the summer. -40 happens sometimes, and it's not nice. When I was a kid, I used to ride my bicycle to school almost every day. If it was -35, that just meant you had to wear maybe a layer more than you would at -20 - but you'd still bike to school if it was only a couple of kilometres, as it was for me. (If your commute to school was more than about 5 km they'd usually arrange some kind of transportation for you, but I never lived more than about 2-3 kilometres from any of the schools I went to.)

I live pretty far inland, which goes some way towards explaining the pretty significant variance in temperatures. I've also lived near the coast for a while, and while the temperature outside never got below about -25 when I was there, even at -15 the constant wind from the sea made it feel actually colder than what I was used to growing up. At least here, when it's -35 or -40, you generally don't get any wind on top of it.

The most hated temperatures here are in the spring and early winter, when you get sleet. Typically, you're in a hurry somewhere and you get on your bike and the wind just keeps throwing this mixture of snow and water, with a bit of ice as well, right in your face. It'll even slide down your neck and down your back under your shirt if you don't have a scarf or something. Then, around the time of the year when you have that, you also get pretty warm days (you know, relatively speaking), when you have sleet on the road even if the snow plough has already been through a couple of times that day.

Then people ride their bikes on it, and overnight, it freezes, preserving the tracks that the bicycles left. If you have to ride through that before the snow plough gets to that part of the road, there's every chance you'll end up in a track that's like rails: it's very hard to turn, even if someone's coming toward you from the opposite direction. If the track was left by someone who ended up sliding and falling down, you might fall down exactly the same way, unable to leave the track they left and not seeing the danger until it's too late. It's a horrible feeling.

I bet this is something that all Nordic people can relate to. The worst part of winter isn't the winter itself: it's when it's coming or going. Snow is OK if it's not very heavy and wet, but the warmer the day, the wetter the snow is going to be.

Blegh. Just thinking about it makes me dread the next couple of months.

I wonder what it would be like to live on a desert. If I'm not mistaken, the days are very hot and the nights are very cold, so you're never comfortable with the temperature. At least there's no snow. (Well, but then again, snow would mean water, and that's generally something you'd want to have more of in a desert environment, at least if you had to try to live there.)

edited 27th Sep '17 12:47:50 PM by BestOf

Depends on what kind of desert. Atacama isn't incredibly hot by their standards. Nearer the coast (which surprisingly doesn't do too much for the humidity of the area) it's rather temperate.

And damn, I start shutting down at 0 Celsius. Can't imagine being expected to go out and about at -15.

If we stopped going outside when it's -15 or -20, we wouldn't get a whole lot done as a nation. All jobs would have to be designed to be very flexible in terms of working from home, and I have no idea how you'd organise education, the postal service, healthcare, and various other services.

I can definitely get that if you're not used to the cold, the thought of going for groceries or something like that at -25 sounds very unpleasant. I'm sure I'd be the same if I was somewhere where the temperature frequently goes to 40 degrees - it'd take me ages to get used to the heat, and the ways you deal with that sort of temperature would have to be taught to me.

When I talk to exchange students or tourists, they ask me how we deal with the cold. Basically, it boils down to layered clothing. One thick piece of cloth is less warm than several thinner layers, even if they, together are still not as thick as the thick cloth you were looking at first. You want there to be layers of warm air between your clothes, as an isolation from the cold. That said, if you do it right, you will be sweaty when you come inside and take off the top layers. I don't know of any way to avoid that.

edited 27th Sep '17 2:45:35 PM by BestOf

I'm pretty sure at some point in the past the comic has specifically said that Canada was actually adopted by England.

-15 is to cold to go anywhere (nobody else agrees with me where I live but that's a minor detail ) 30 is also to hot to do anything *ditto*. Though I'm from Southern BC, so it doesn't regularly get to -30, though it did get to -25 in Central BC when I lived there, and I felt it was to cold to function and nobody agreed with me.

I'd like to live in Vancouver but I hate the rain, kind of want it to actual get somewhat hot or cold. And also am not a secret millionaire and can't afford to rent there.

Yeah I'm pretty sure there is a comic where it shows Canada being adopted. Also I didn't get the flag mix up and kept staring so many times trying to figure out what was wrong and was like is she upset he drew the cigarette?

edited 27th Sep '17 5:17:05 PM by phantom1

Had a Norwegian exchange student in a class last semester, according to her she was actually colder here because we had no heating in our classrooms.

No heating in the classrooms sounds miserable, we are required to have it. Heating and air conditioning both.

edited 27th Sep '17 5:19:39 PM by phantom1

That's not just you. If you plot the sun's North vs South position in the sky for the entire year (which functionally equates to the hours of daylight for a given location) it experiences its greatest rate of change around the equinoxes and it's lowest rates of change at the solstices. So yeah, that is actually a thing and further from the equator you go, the more pronounced the effect.

It took me a couple of seconds of looking at it too.

I wonder if there's an intentional extra layer with the US drawing France (his apparent "real mom") since the Dutch were early colonizers in the US, although their hold on "New Netherland" didn't last all that long and was rather limited in scope.

Oh yeah time of day earlier darkness thing is daunting. Also it being light so late in the summer always throws me off to.

Depends on the classroom, but these specific ones were so old that my father had had classes there in his time. Newer buildings on campus come standard with heating. On the bright side, they had electrical outlets on every seat, so I count that a net positive.

In Finland, you could look for a very long time and never find a house where the windows have only one glass each. Instead, each window has a pane, then some space, and another pane (and maybe a third sometimes). The air between the two panes of each window serves as insulation, at least when the window is closed. Here's a pretty typical-looking window from some webstore's catalogue, for illustration. Even old houses that weren't built with double windows (or whatever you call them) would probably have them installed at some point, at least if the house is still in use.

That's one thing I noticed when I lived in the UK for a while. Every time I opened a window, I couldn't help noticing that there was just one pane of glass. That's just one of the ways that our buildings differ from theirs (ours also tend to be much newer, as we don't have that many historically important buildings in the cities).

Maybe the main difference, though - and this probably doesn't make much of a difference for temperature control - is that most Finnish homes have a sauna. Small flats don't have it (so you have to book a time from the communal sauna that's typically in every block of flats or other collection of housing units). Just about any flat that's meant for 3 or more people, though, will have its own sauna. I think that's probably pretty unique to us. (By us, I mean Finland, but probably also the Nordic countries - I'd assume they have them too, but not quite as many per capita as we do.)

edited 27th Sep '17 6:11:12 PM by BestOf

From my own observations in Denmark, we generally have saunas in public baths and swimming pools, and not in a whole lot of other places.

Double glazing. Triple glazing for three. Not really a thing around here (at least not yet) probably because people are more concerned about keeping cool than staying warm and for many years the general option for that was to open a window to catch any scrap of breeze that might be passing and still is in many older homes. While double glazing can help, it still does allow radiant heat/IR through that will still let a house heat up, even with double glazing.

You don't find many single pane windows in Colorado either. It's because outside the mountains along the plains you have a Russian style climate. Hot as hell in the summer (sometimes breaking 40C) and can get quite cold for a 37-41N latitude. The coldest I've seen where I'm at next the mountains and at just shy of 38N is a chilly -37F (-38C).

I know a few places in the mountains get even colder, -40s have happened before up there, especially in the northern mountains.

And yes the difference between mountains and plains is just like north and south in Finland. In August, the mountain begins changing to autumn and depending on how quick the cold sets in, all the colors could have changed before September is out on the mountains while in the plain it's barely changed from summer.

The reverse is true in spring months or as we call them "mud season". The plains can rapidly turn green and warm and the mountains still buried in feet (or even meters) of snow.

Then again the elevation difference between our highest point at 14,443 feet (Over 4000 meters) and our lowest point at 3870 feet (a little over 1000 meters) is a bit extreme.

edited 28th Sep '17 5:29:37 AM by MajorTom

The prevalence of saunas is kinda weird to me. Here they're incredibly luxury items. Plus we're way too prudish for casual nudity.