Koselig Then and Now

Photo: A scene in my mom's hutch.

Edie and I rented a $50 a night AirBnb “suite” in Palmer, Alaska for two weeks last summer as part of our month up there.  As you might imagine $50 a night doesn’t buy you much in the way of space, privacy, cleanliness, and interior climate control.  But it was a big step up from our usual practice of camping, and even was less expensive than many camping places we’ve been to over the years.  Even better than the comfort and convenience upgrade was the unobstructed million-dollar-a-day view of the mountains to the east.  When we tired of staring out the windows in the evenings, we watched summer Olympics events on TV.  One evening one of the commentators was talking about the competitors from Norway and made passing reference to how Norwegians were as he said, “the happiest people in the world because of their practice of koselig.”

Being in Alaska at the time, another far north latitude, I had to know what was koselig.

(The interweb says “KOS-e-lee” with a long round O, and a fast long E.)

Everything I read about it so far says it’s almost impossible to translate, at least not with one word.  It has to do with how to thrive psychologically and emotionally when the winter weather outside is cold and harsh and the nights long, very, very long.  It relates to enjoying the outdoors and then taking refuge with good company, food and drink, warmth and beautiful cheerful surroundings. This description is only for a start, I’m sure there’s more.  If you want to read a fun article, I’ve linked in the comments to one by Lorelou Desjardins in a promotion of her book “A Frog in the Fiord: One Year in Norway.”

Forgotten Camas Washougal as a title fits part of the process of writing this weekly column because I spent a few hours last night trying to remember, or unforget, when and how I experienced koselig while growing up in Camas.  Our winter nights were not as long and cold as they are in Alaska, but they are long and can be cold.  Wherever I’ve traveled in the US, people always would say, “Doesn’t it always rain in Seattle?”

Cloudy.  It didn’t always rain in the NW, as such, but it would be cloudy with mist falling down all day and night long. July and August were often dry, but the cold came in October and then it seemed it would “rain” November through June.  I remember one fall in the early 70s when it rained every day in November, except the last three or four.  A friend of mine from Hawaii was depressed all the time because of the weather.  For me it was normal.

Bleak.  Yes.  Camas, and Washougal too, I suppose, was bleak, as I remember, for four months of the year.  The cold wasn’t the nice, clean, sharp cold that you can protect yourself from with wind breaking and insulating layers, it was the insidious damp cold that penetrated whatever you might wear.   It sucked the heat from your body. Then, working the swing shift at the mill was bleak.  You leave for work just before everyone else in the world is arriving home.  You work when it is dark outside and you arrive home when everyone else is sleeping. By the time you arise in the morning, everyone else has left the house on their merry ways.  And the graveyard shift was even worse. It’s called graveyard for a reason.

I think that instances of koselig in my life in those days were not rare, but they weren’t common either.

When we were children and visiting grandparents, our grandmothers would tuck us in bed every night and we’d say that prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

The prayer was always comforting back then, and it might be now, too, because I'm older. As I look back it might have fostered in us children an unreasonable fear of dying in the night. I confess I don’t know why this would have been a concern of our grandparents and I’d like to know.  As active and adventurous as we were, I wonder why she didn’t have us pray in the morning when we woke up that the Lord would take our souls if we died during the play or school day when the danger of a car accident, falling from a tree, drowning in the river, or dropping dead from embarrassment was much greater than, say rolling off the top bunk that had a safety rail or a meteor hitting the house. But I risk being unserious. It was comforting at the time.

Friday night high school football games were koselig.  It was dark and cold.  Everyone breathed out clouds of steam.  Cheerleaders and cheers. Excitement.  The ad hoc tag football game in the end zone.  Bright lights.  And home games usually followed by a dance in the cafeteria.  One night returning from an away game on the rooter bus, I didn’t really know anyone. I had gone by myself. The kids were not in my extremely limited social circle.  They were in fact the cool, sociable kids.  I was a loner back then, basically, because I was unaware of my value as a person and had no skills at conversation, and not a lot of social courage or confidence.  I’d never been to a summer camp of any kind, nor was in a church youth group.  But that night probably for the first time I experienced a feeling of being part of a group other than family.  They sang camp songs. One or several of the kids, girls, I think, led in singing, and I sang along, the best I could not knowing them.  I’d never been a part of anything like that.  Traveling home in a bus on a cold fall night with a bunch of young people singing cheerful and inspiring songs.  It sounds like a poignant scene from a movie.  Koselig.

I can cite a lot of examples of long solo walks at night or on a cold winter day around Camas and Fern Prairie and returning to a warm comfortable, bright house.  I’ve written here earlier of a Christmas eve at my grandmother’s and later, an evening in high school where I lit a fire in the fireplace at the abandoned Leadbetter mansion with two friend-girls and we shared from a bottle of wine.  There are countless tiny examples, but it was never a conscious practice, and I think life would have been richer back then knowing how important it to cultivate a culture of koselig, which in raising a family we did so every day without being aware of the concept.

One story that encapsulates our approach.  In the summer of 2002 we travelled with our six children across the United States and into Canada in a new, green Ford E-350 12 passenger van pulling a small grey cargo trailer.  During our trip we spent a week or so in the North Cascades in Washington State.  The youngest child was seven years old, so we didn’t do anything extreme as per an adult level, though everyday we did something maybe considered dangerous when children were concerned.  We camped low near a stream and drove up to the end of the road every day, with a view of Mt. Shuksan.  To our surprise, early August was not yet hiking season in the North Cascades, so the high trails were still deep in snow, which made route finding hard.  With so much snow, it’s almost impossible to tell how steep a slope is below you, so we made ice axes for all the children from crooks of seasoned tree branches, and then we practiced self arresting on a safe slope.  Just in case, you know.  We didn’t have ropes.  One tricky part was crossing a stream because you couldn’t tell how strong the snow bridge was over it. Often we had to climb down a bank, step across the stream and then climb back up the other side. Anyway, we decided to spend a night up on Goat Mountain, a 6,000 and some feet high peak.  We hiked up several hours and picked a camping spot in the middle of a thick clump of low conifers, probably spruce.  Anyone passing by would not have seen us tucked in there.  We pitched a tarp and spread our eight sleep bags underneath, barely underneath.  It snowed all night long, a wet snow that slid off the tarp. Here’s the koselig part:  I read out loud to the children from the Hobbit, by J.R. Tolkien.

The next morning we found that the mountain just a few yards above us covered in fresh unmelted snow, below the line the new snow had melted.  It was unbelievably beautiful, with the pure white and rocky Shuksan prominent and close by to the east.  That day we hiked up to the top of Goat Mountain, we thought, but which we realized was not the true summit.  We eventually made our way across lush untrammeled tundra along a ridge to the base of the true summit, another few hundred feet above us, and I decided it was too dangerous and too late in the day to try to go up there.  Recently one of my adult children told me he still regrets we didn’t go for it.  I don’t think he quite remembers the four hour hike back to our van, the drive back to base camp, and how our 10 x 12 canvas wall tent had collapsed the night before under the weight of the rain and snow, breaking and bending some of the aluminum poles.  Edie scrambled in the dark to make dry beds for the younger children in the van. We ran the engine to get it warm, then she made hot chocolate, while I scrambled like a maniac to sweep the water out of the tent and set it back up.  I think one of the older children built a campfire. We made up dry beds in the tent the best we could and everything was perfect.  I don’t know if I ever enjoyed a bed more. Koselig.

Once we travelled the northern section of the Bartram Trail. William Bartram was a late 18^th Century naturalist who explored much of the Southeast US. Nine miles of the Little Tennessee River forms part of the trail and we did this by canoe into Franklin, North Carolina and from there walked over hill and dale to join the Appalachian Trail on the top of Cheoah Bald, from which we descended into Wesser along the Nantahala River.  Anyway.  On one of these days, thunder followed us for hours until the rain caught up and poured.  We trudged along under umbrellas and ponchos until it was time to set up camp. Of course we were damp, especially boots and feet.  I always liked to camp well off the trail so that we couldn’t be seen and I’d search the topo map for flat places for tents and tarps.  One of my sons who was and is especially skilled in woodscraft took on the task of lighting a fire, not an easy feat when the all the world is soaking wet. But he found a small dead tree, pushed it over, and scooped out the dry punky wood inside and used it for firestarter.  The rain had let up and we sat around the cheery campfire, our bare wrinkled prune-feet toward the center, while we tried to dry our socks and boots a little.

When I talk about moving to Alaska most people of the Lower 48 say, “But what about the everlasting nights?”  My daughter, who lives there now, and who overwintered there once so far, says, that most year-round residents enjoy winter sports and get outside as much as they can.  Ice skating, cross country skiing, mushing, and just hiking. The hardest time of year is what she calls “mud season” when it begins to thaw and all the trails are impassible, not frozen and not dry. Some people keep sun lanterns in their living quarters to simulate an earlier sunrise and later sunset.  Until I mentioned it, she had never heard of koselig, but she said that the winter people employ it in various ways, such as being sure to go to a weekly potluck with friends.  Some of our ancestors are Swedish, so we must have some of this winter survival blood in our genes.  I’d like to take a vacation in Alaska in the dead of winter or maybe Iceland, which is nearer to us, and see the Aurora Borealis.

One of my sons hiked 300 miles last summer on Norway’s system of trails.  If you’d like to see fantastic videos of his similar treks in Scotland and the Alaska Brooks Range, I’ll post a link to his YouTube channel.

When Hurricane Helene blew through a month and a half ago we were without on-grid electricity for two weeks and longer.  After we got an inverter generator we ran it mostly to keep the fridge and freezer cold, but every night I ran an extension cord to one single table lamp in our main room. Later after bedtime, I kept three of those battery powered flickering votive candles burning all night in the bedroom, and several more throughout the main room in the house, for navigation in the dark.

Now that I know about koselig, I’ll be looking for ways to practice it more and more, and not only in winter.  Seems like it would made a good subject for school or a club.  Like, you know, Feng Shui, Ikebana, or even Jiu Jitsu.

***

 

PS:  Below is the concept of a short story I started writing.

Working title: “The Long Night Awaits”.

A sleep therapist who began studying the subject because of his own insomnia has a successful career and helps hundreds of patients. But there one patient, his most difficult, who had what’s called Endless Night Disorder (END). It’s a belief and sensation that those hours awake in the middle of the night in the dark last forever, or at least as long as a year.  

The therapist asks the patient to begin a journal giving an account of his insomniac periods, which as it turns out is usually between 1 and 6 AM.  The patient tells of how he often goes outside and walks in the dark for days and even weeks.  How the moon seems to never move and people out and about are like frozen statues cool to the touch.  As an experiment he touched a girl on the cheek with the back of his hand and it gave her a blister.  Only the nocturnal animals move and carry on like normal, which the patient finds terrifying.

An odd thing is that the patient says he sleeps during these endless nights, but when he awakes, it is still night and the clock has barely registered any passage of time. This supposed sleep explains how the patient is not seriously debilitated by his insomnia, the main problem is he is so alone.

So, treatment ensues and it emerges that patient was traumatized as a child by realistic nightmares of Norse monsters when he and his family lived in northern Norway for several years over the long winters. Nightmares brought by being tormented by his older brothers. Well, the therapist has some ideas of how to proceed, but the patient insists that the endless nights are real and he has proof. The fact that he has written a lot of novels during the endless nights and can produce several complete ones in a single night. These are successful novels under a dozen pseudonyms, the patient claims, some that are household names that the therapist recognizes.

 The therapist is sympathetic and professional in his quite natural skepticism until one session when patient brings in a box of unpublished manuscripts—one box of dozens, the patient says—which the therapist finds immensely disconcerting. Most are handwritten and edited, and a few typed.  He wonders if the patient had much deeper problems than insomnia or loneliness that he would create and even believe such an elaborate hoax.  On the other hand, what if the patient is actually telling the truth?  He begins reading one of the manuscripts, a comic fictional travel guide, and it’s actually well done, perhaps even publishable. The therapist does not consider himself an expert and thinks of sending it around to some of his colleagues who are more literary than his is.

But the therapist doesn’t get far into the book, because during this time he's distracted when he wins an international award not just in his own specialized field but in the world of psychotherapy. A huge cash prize. The therapist is so humble, and devoted to work (he isn’t married or have any children) he doesn’t have any idea what to do with the money and feels such a failure because he hasn’t yet helped the one special patient. The patient then suggests that the therapist go to Norway and do some research into the folk legends—that maybe he can learn something there, but says in urgent emotional terms that it should be above the Arctic Circle in the summer when the sun doesn’t set. The therapist goes along with the idea, takes off an entire summer and has an amazing time, during which he develops a theory of compensatory healing and is eager to begin testing it when he arrives home.  During this time he meets a lovely young widow who has two children.

CH is an idea that people who have suffered traumatizing loss or abuse can find healing through overwhelming opposite experiences and life situations to neutralize and counteract the damaging effects of the injury.  For instance—and this is relatively trivial example—if an ill tempered neighbor is hateful and curses out a patient because of an irrational grudge, the anger and self-doubt that the patient feels and keeps him awake at night can be made to disappear if another neighbor or two, or a whole team of neighbors, comes over and helps the patient with some chores or throws him a birthday party. (Note, I don’t know if CH is a real recognized therapy because I made it up. I made up END, too.)

When the therapist returns from Norway and gets back to work, the patient does not resume the scheduled sessions. He never answers the phone. There's not even provision for voice messages. Never responds to mail. The therapist is about to begin a deeper search even to the extent of notifying law enforcement about a possible missing person.

At that time the therapist’s off-site secretary of the kind that works from home, calls him and says she has received a registered letter from a bank. He says to open it. And it’s an accounting of tax-paid millions of dollars in publishing royalties from multiple companies that are held in his name, and always have been.  When the therapist receives the bank’s detail listing of account activity by email attachment, he finds among the many charitable contributions, one large sum from late last year donated to the professional psychiatric society that gave him the award, the money he used for his Norway trip. 

Epilogue: over the next couple years the therapist makes inquiries into the whereabouts of the patient, but he finds no one who ever actually saw him.  It’s if he never existed.  So, in honor of the patient and his generosity, the therapist always takes a month off once a year and with his new wife explores a place in the world when the sun never sets.