Mark Mahaney's Polar Night is a passage through a rapidly changing landscape in Alaska's northernmost town of Utqiagvik. It's an exploration of prolonged darkness, told through the strange beauty of a snowscape cast in a two month shadow. The unnatural lights that flare in the sun's absence and the shapes that emerge from the landscape are unexpectedly beautiful in their softness and harshness. It's hard to see past the heavy gaze of climate change in an arctic town, though Polar Night is a visual poem about endurance, isolation and survival.
Until recently, the prevailing view of marine life at high latitudes has been that organisms enter a general resting state during the dark Polar Night and that the system only awakens with the return of the sun. Recent research, however, with coordinated, multidisciplinary field campaigns based on the high Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard, have provided a radical new perspective. Instead of a system in dormancy, a new perspective of a system in full operation and with high levels of activity across all major phyla is emerging. Examples of such activities and processes include: Active marine organisms at sea surface, water column and the sea-floor. At surface we find active foraging in seabirds and fish, in the water column we find a high biodiversity and activity of zooplankton and larvae such as active light induced synchronized diurnal vertical migration, and at seafloor there is a high biodiversity in benthic animals and macroalgae. The Polar Night is a period for reproduction in many benthic and pelagic taxa, mass occurrence of ghost shrimps (Caprellides), high abundance of Ctenophores, physiological evidence of micro- and macroalgal cells that are ready to utilize the first rays of light when they appear, deep water fishes found at water surface in the Polar night, and continuous growth of bivalves throughout the winter. These findings not only begin to shape a new paradigm for marine winter ecology in the high Arctic, but also provide conclusive evidence for a top-down controlled system in which primary production levels are close to zero. In an era of environmental change that is accelerated at high latitudes, we believe that this new insight is likely to strongly impact how the scientific community views the high latitude marine ecosystem. Despite the overwhelming darkness, the main environmental variable affecting marine organisms in the Polar Night is in fact light. The light regime during the Polar Night is unique with respect to light intensity, spectral composition of light and photoperiod.
Anna, Queen of Arendelle, has been tirelessly preparing for the Polar Night's Celebration that is held every year to welcome the time when the sun doesn't rise in the Polar Circle. She has been working so hard, her fiancé Kristoff suggests she take a night off to visit her sister Elsa, the Snow Queen. Anna loves the idea. Accompanied by Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf, Anna reunites with Elsa in the Enchanted Forest. After telling spooky stories around the campfire, Olaf swears that one of the creatures of their tales has come to life! Who else is responsible for the sudden onset of storms and the earlier than normal darkening of the skies? Why else is everyone starting to become so forgetful? Anna and Elsa join forces to determine what is going on. Together they recall Kristoff's terrifying tale about a princess who turned into a draugr—an undead creature that steals memories in an effort to make others forget the misdeeds it committed when it was alive. Is it possible that Kristoff inadvertently unearthed memories of a draugr, and thus unleashed the monster upon Arendelle? Anna and Elsa must uncover the real story behind the tale before everyone in Arendelle forgets who they are and is cast into darkness forever....
When Detective Danny Fitzpatrick leaves his hometown of Chicago and moves to Fairbanks, Alaska he wants nothing more than to escape the violence and heartbreak that left his life in pieces. Numbed by alcohol and the frozen temperatures of an Alaskan winter, Danny is content with a dead-end job investigating Fairbanks' cold cases. That all changes when a pretty blond woman goes missing on the winter solstice, and Danny stumbles upon some surprising connections between her disappearance and that of another Fairbanks woman three years earlier. Forced out of his lethargy, Danny sets out to both find the missing woman and solve his own cold case. The investigation points Danny towards Aleksei Nechayev, the handsome and charming proprietor of an old asylum turned haunted tourist attraction in the Arctic town of Coldfoot. As he tries to find a link between Nechayev and his case, Danny's instinct tells him that Nechayev is much more than what he seems. Danny has no idea that Nechayev is hiding a secret that is much more horrifying than anything he could ever have imagined. As his obsession with finding the missing women grows, Danny finds his own life in danger. And when the truth is finally revealed, the world as he knows it will never be the same.
Sixteen-year-old Iduna harbors a dark secret. On the surface, she is an Arendellian village girl, an aspiring inventor, and the best friend of Prince Agnarr, but she is also secretly Northuldra. Ever since the day the forest fell, Arendellians have despised and distrusted Northuldra with a vengeance. No matter that the Northuldra—along with some of Arendelle’s own—have been trapped in the Enchanted Forest behind an impenetrable wall of mist since the day of the battle. Iduna doesn’t know why the mist refuses to part, or why it descended to begin with. The only clear thing is that she must keep her identity from everyone, even Agnarr. Her life depends on it. Fortunately for her, Agnarr doesn’t know that Iduna is the Northuldra girl he saw seemingly flying on a gust of wind all those years ago, the day of the celebration turned disaster. The day Agnarr lost his father, the king. The day Agnarr himself almost died. What Agnarr does know is that Iduna is a true ally in the face of his royal responsibilities and the expectations of an overbearing council and a well-meaning regent who will rule in Agnarr’s place until he turns twenty-one and assumes the Arendellian throne. As Iduna and Agnarr grow ever closer, however, friendship is no longer enough. If only falling for each other didn’t mean risking their futures: Iduna’s as a hidden-in-plain-sight citizen of Arendelle, and Agnarr’s as imminent king. But for a chance at true love, the risk might be worth taking
Describes the unique light phenomena of the Alaskan Arctic and the way animals adapt to the temperature and daylight changes each month of the year. Reprint.
In search of snow, adventure, polar bears and the beautiful but elusive Northern Lights, Julie Hunt heads to the northernmost wildernesses of Europe in an adventure of a lifetime that takes her from Helsinki, jewel of the Baltic, to the frozen swamps and twenty-four hour darkness of the High Arctic.
An account of one couple's journey around the Arctic Circle by sailboat, a trip that becomes a nightmare as the wife must leave her husband to face the long Arctic night alone.
