The Value of SADness

The Thule Eskimos of northern Greenland have a word for winter depression–perlerorneq. The poetic equivalent of the western world’s seasonal affective disorder it translates: to feel the weight of life. The Polar observer Barry Lopez describes this “winter madness” in his book “Arctic Dreams” as “the feeling of looking ahead to all that must be accomplished and to retreat to the present feeling defeated, weary before starting, a core of anger, a miserable sadness.” But the studies of Lopez and other polar observers and anthropologists reveals that perlerorneq holds slightly more nuance than its western equivalent.

For the Thule and other polar cultures, seasonality is an indicator of culturally appropriate times to process life, death, and loss. And while SAD in the western world is categorically classified as a medical disorder, for the Thule, and other polar communities, seasonal sadness and manic periods hold collective cultural significance. They are moored in shared meaning systems that, counterintuitively, give them a positive connotation and are deeply necessary seasons of contemplation that compliment the times of year when there will be too much work to contemplate. For these communities, and others where life is deeply integrated to the natural world, sadness can in fact be good.

Norway’s winter blues

Roughly ten years after the reporting and naming of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) by the National Institute for Mental Health, Fulbright Scholar, Cynthia Stuhlmiler, moved to Tromso, Norway to study the disorder in a location where, as she explains in her study “Understanding Seasonal Affective Disorder and Experiences in Northern Norway,”

“One might expect it to be widespread.”

This is because this region of northern Norway is 386 miles above the Arctic Circle where the sun doesn’t rise for two months in winter. Scientists largely agreed at the time that SAD resulted from a shift in circadian rhythm during the shortening of days. Their studies of bright light exposure showed that as light decreased, serotonin decreased and melatonin increased resulting in slight depression. But what Stuhlmiler found, and scientists studying throughout the polar regions have confirmed since, was puzzling. In her published study for the Journal of Nursing Scholarship she reflects,