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So nice it happened twice: Sun makes one of its most spectacular Solfestuka celebration appearances ever – one day after its first actual appearance

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Great. Now even the sun is fake news.

Not that any of the hundreds of people cared as the sun made a glorious appearance over the southern mountains under a cloudless sky at about 12:50 p.m. Friday during the annual return-of-the-sun festival Friday on the old hospital steps near Svalbard Church.

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Youths in warm clothing and sun costumes get the premium seats around the old hospital steps for the return-of-the-sun festival at midday Friday. The steps, all that remains after the hospital was destroyed during World War II, are considered the first place in the main part of Longyearbyen where the sun touches for the first time after the nearly four-month polar night. Photo by Mark Sabbatini / Icepeople.

“The sun is back in Longyearbyen!” came the emcee’s shout as the crowd roared and, yes, that much is true enough. It was also one of the most spectacular sunrises among the decades of celebrations, which often are partially or completely obscured by clouds, as only the mildest of breezes added to the minus 18 degrees Celsius chill.

But contrary to the annual proclamations in everything from local Tweets to global headlines, it wasn’t for the first time this year on those ceremonial stairs as the first rays of light actually touched them briefly exactly 24 hours earlier.

“I was really bewildered, not expecting it,” Marion Prudhon, a guide and occasional staff writer for Icepeople, wrote in an e-mail. She was on a tour with Birgit Edgeworth of Austrailia, when they visited the stairs from the hospital that was destroyed in World War II on the day before the ceremony.

“I came here last year to the North Pole, and I heard about the stairs and the sun coming back on March 8, so I wanted to come back this year and see it,” Edgeworth said. Alas, she was going on a trip outside of town on Friday, but nonetheless got to enjoy “dozens of seconds” in the light at the famous spot.

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Birgit Edgeworth, a visitor from Australia, sees the sun shine on the old hospital steps one day ahead of the “official” first day. Photo by Marion Prudhon.

“I don’t want to speak too much about it, but this is fantastic – this was my goal and I saw it,” she said.

Such “off-date” appearances happen from time to time due to leap year, tiny shifts in the sun’s long-term cycle and so on. Besides, most folks already know Longyearbyen’s first official sunrise was Feb. 16 and plenty of them ventured beyond the mountains keeping the town in shadow to feel the first rays and share photos of them with the world before the ceremonial date.

So the light and warmth of the ceremony – the highlight of the weeklong Solfestuka festival that is Longyearbyen’s most-popuar annual event –are as much about the community as actually getting to see the sun. As always, the 20-minute gathering was dominated by the children’s music group Polargospel, which spent most of their time on the steps singing several traditional sun songs and then helping lead the crowd in the chant to coax the sun to peer over the horizon (which in English translates to “Sun, sun come again! The sun is our best friend!” – but rest assured the cadence and rhyme is vastly superior in Norwegian).

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Ingeborg Andersen, a fifth-grade student, explains what inspired the sun she draw that won the annual contest among local youths for the official Solfestuka logo during Friday’s ceremony. Photo by Mark Sabbatini / Icepeople.

First, however, another annual ritual took place as Ingeborg Andersen, 11, a fifth-grade student, was presented with a framed copy of the sun she drew that was selected as the official Solfestuka logo in a competition among local students. Also in typical fashion, she was somewhat  brief when answering questions about what inspired her drawing and what the sun’s return means to her, also she didn’t shy away from noting she really wished she could have included red in the design, but the rules limited her to four colors.

Then it was time for the annual chant and, if the crowd missed the early first appearance, at least the spirit of seeking an early arrival prevailed as the shouts began a good seven minutes before the edge of the solar orb appeared, resulting in a few short interludes while everyone gave their vocal cords a rest.

But appear it did to rousing applause, after which a good portion of the crowd departed for warmer spaces and/or to get back to work after what subjectively might be considered one of the best TGIF lunch breaks possible anywhere on Earth. Others stayed for the traditional post-ceremony “sun buns” and food/drinks nearby at Svalbard Church.

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Polargospel performs one of its traditional return-of-the-sun songs on the old church steps during Friday’s midday celebration. Photo by Mark Sabbatini / Icepeople.

The festival’s youth-oriented focus will continue tonight with a party for students at the Longyearbyen Youth Club and an afternoon of outdoor recreation/music/food at the just-opened ski hill near the center of town starting at 1 p.m. Saturday. There will also be concerts starting at 7 p.m. Saturday at Kulturhuset by the trio of Liv Mari Schei, Trond Breen and Finn Sletten, followed by a swing-dance concert by the Longyearbyen Big Band. Polargospel will also be featured during a Mass with Communion at 11 a.m. at Svalbard Church.

 

 

 

 

 

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
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