When I speak with friends who don’t leave close by, one of the most common questions they ask is whether it is still light or dark over here. And considering that the amount of daylight has a tremendous impact on life and culture in Finland, this is always a relevant question. The light period during the summer gives everyone an extra boost of energy, while the dark winters bring extra weight, drowsiness and moodiness. People talk about it like they do about the weather.

The difference in the amount of light and darkness between summers and winters is quite extreme at this latitude. And the swings between day and night during the course of a year are almost too swift and difficult to comprehend.

Recently I have stumbled upon Gaisma, a web service visualizing the relation between light and darkness for thousands of places on Earth. The graphs Gaisma generates provide absolutely astonishing information, but are at the same time incredibly easy to understand. The first graph shows the relation between sunshine and darkness for Espoo, Finland, the second for Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the third for Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Amazing stuff.

Mladen