Beaming Good Cheer to a Norwegian Town’s Dark Days – Mirrors replace the sun

For lack of more interesting news, The New York Times published: Beaming Good Cheer to a Norwegian Town’s Dark Days. Marquel, TPVs Times Sun correspondent, flew to Norway and found out that mirrors light up the town. “Scmukvie Im otosol” say the villagers (“Fuck the Sun”).

This little village in Norway, whose name apparently means “Smallville” in English, is totally hidden between two mountains and thus gets literally zero sun six months out of the year. The town has placed a giant mirror on top of one mountain and it beams light down into the town square. When it’s sunny of course. On sunny days, though, everybody is ecstatic.

Marquel admired the Scandinavians for their toughness, especially Norway, and their ability to cope in a hostile environment. But now it looks like they want to be like everybody else. They want sunlight all year round. It’s as if the world were coming to an end. What would Marquel do without his tough-as-nails Norwegians?

Marquel, predictably, took the first flight which was Iceland Airways. It was also the cheapest and the only one his editor would reimburse.

Reykjavik was nice. But cold. And dark. The plane connected with one to Norway and from there I went by bus to my little village. It was daytime but there was no sun. A beam of light shone off the mountaintop. People were in the square enjoying the light, I supposed. It wasn’t all that bright. It was like living in a house where they had decided to change all their lights to fluorescents or LEDs, but of the lowest wattage possible. It was creepy.

I went up to a happy Norwegian and asked him about the sun.

“Sun, shmun,” he said in perfect Brooklynese, “who needs it? We have our mirror,” pointing to the beam on the mountaintop.

“But what about being tough-as-nails Norwegians,” I asked.

“Tough as nails?” He asked. “How can you be tough in the dark? I mean total dark. Do you know we used to have fistfights around here in the winter where it was so dark that nobody ever connected? They would fight for hours, take a break, have some aquavit, resume the fight then go home to sleep. Nobody ever got hurt, that’s how tough we were.”

“Hmmm,” I said, “that’s not what I imagined.”

“No,” he said, “bet you also thought we were really socially progressive and sexually liberated.”

“Well, yes” I said, “that is your reputation.”

“Well it was because of the sun, or no sun.” He said. “We would go out on a date and walking home if you didn’t hold on to your date tightly, if you let go for a second, you ended up kissing the wrong person. If you were beyond kissing you can imagine the confusion six months later when the sun came out and all the wrong people were pregnant. It was Hell sorting out who slept with whom and who the father was.”

“That’s not exactly the picture,” I said, “I had of Norwegians. How is it now?”

“Not perfect.” He asserted, “the young kids have been going up the mountain and fooling with the mirror.”

“How so?” I wondered.

“At night, the couples come out to neck in the square and sometimes more. The kids on top of the mountain drive up there and at some inconvenient time, they turn their headlights onto the mirror. Some unhappy couple, or should I say, some previously happy couple, will jump up, more undressed than dressed, and flee. We don’t know what to do about it.”

“That’s not the tough as nails Norwegians I imagined,” said I, “I’d a thought you’d give those kids a good licking.”

“No,” he said again, “we’ve learned that can be dangerous.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Now that we have light,” he answered, “people finally have started to connect. Lots of broken noses and missing teeth. It’s not like in the old days when you could have a four-hour fight, get drunk, go home and sleep it off. A trip to the hospital happens more often. It’s awful. Our best fighters have retired.”

“So is the mirror a good idea?” I asked.

“We really can’t decide. There’s a lot less pregnancies, and people have gotten used to the idea of marrying someone they know. That’s a new experience. Would you call that progress?”

I didn’t know. “What do you think?”

“You might say it’s been a real eye opener. Now our bosses know when we show up for work. Used to be,” he continued, “you could tell your boss you were there all day when you weren’t. But now they can see whether you’re there. It’s a different world.”

“I guess so,” I said. “But if you could get rid of the mirror, would you?”

He looked at me, almost sadly. “The worst part is that everybody is happy on sunny winter days. That never happened before.”

“Why not?” I stupidly asked.

“We didn’t have any sunny winter days. Every day, every single day, was pitch black.” He said.

“So this is good,” I said. “Now you’re happy.”

“Au contraire,” he said. “Only on sunny days. Now we’re miserable on dark days which still happen more often than bright days because winter weather is never good despite the mirror.”

“You’re saying?” I wondered.

“I guess what I’m saying is that in the past with six pitch black months, we didn’t know how sad we were. Now we do. The suicide rate is climbing. We’ve decided that when it hits 6.5, we’ll toss the mirror over the other side of the mountain.”

“I guess that will be progress,” I said.

“Well at least, if we got depressed, we could go out, have a harmless fight and crawl back home drunk. And it was sometimes interesting finding out six months later who it was you were sleeping with all winter. So I guess we’ll have to see what progress really means.”

I went home a bit wiser. That night I picked a fight with a giant and we went outside to settle the score. It was pitch black and I lost track of my giant in about fifteen minutes. I didn’t even try to hit him but I could hear him breathing heavily as he threw punch after punch into nowhere. We both had some aquavit, spent another hour essentially exercising, and went to sleep. I would have liked a date just to see how that would go but it wasn’t in the cards. On the plane later in the day I thought about what progress really meant and I hadn’t a clue.

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For news more interesting than anywhere else, follow Marquel on Twitter @MarquelatTPV.

TPV’s Correspondent

Beaming Good Cheer to a Norwegian Town’s Dark Days – Mirrors replace the sun