Arctic Syndrome

A young student from a country far south of Finland expressed to me yesterday that she was suffering from a seasonal illness. On further questioning she told me that she could feel her heart pounding and it was almost as if she was having a heart attack. She had been advised by doctors that this was because of the darkness, and that she should have more lights in her room.

With lots of Indians now coming to live in these northern latitudes, I felt that maybe I should share some of the thoughts I have on some of my experiences of living in Finland, as it may help some of the newcomers.

What this young student is gong through is what I have labelled many years ago as "Arctic Syndrome". This is not to be confused with "Arctic Hysteria" which is also known as "Piblokto", which  is a condition exclusively appearing in Inuit societies living within the Arctic Circle. This appears most prevalently in winter and is considered to be a form of a culture-specific disorder. The symptoms could include intense "hysteria" (screaming, uncontrolled wild behavior), depression, coprophagia, insensitivity to extreme cold and more. This condition is most often seen in dogs and Eskimo women.

The forms of Arctic Syndrome that I have experienced and is common to men and women as far south as Oulu, about 150 km south of the Arctic Circle, is similar to the extent that it causes rapid increase of the heartbeat, but the hysteria is almost as if the person has become claustrophobic.

I first felt this the very first winter I faced in Finland in 1984. I realised that what was affecting me was the lack of sunshine, and probably the lack of Vitamin D. This may have been part of the reason. I knew I had to overcome this. Nobody I talked to had any explanation and there was no easy access to internet databases those days to tell me what I was experiencing.

My own remedy, which was what my body told me to do,  was that I went to work very early, before the sun rose, and I stayed at work, in a warm bright environment till well after what would have been my normal sunset - after 7 pm, whereas the sun was actually setting before 5 pm. My body told me that my mental clock was out of rhythm with the daylight clock around me. I felt that if I could immunise myself from the actually time clock and fool my mental clock to think I was still in a time zone it felt comfortable with, my body could be fooled into thinking that my mental clock was functioning normally.

The atmosphere where I worked, inside the University, was such that I was able to do this quite well. I found that my mental clock believed that I was in the time zone which I was used to. I had problems on weekends, as I was usually the only one at work and if I happened to look out of my window, I could see the darkness coming down. So I pulled down the shutters of my office room to allow myself the isolation from the darkness outside of my brightly lit room.

It took me about 3 years to get over this and after that I found I was not bothered by this problem.

Annikki also has a similar version of this Syndrome in that she cannot sleep at night till exhaustion puts her to sleep. But she does not have the other side effects as the feeling of being shut in. That is probably because is born in this environment and her mental clock is able to run into the new darkness routine. However, even after the last 20+ years after her return to Finland after living in India, she still finds it difficult to get to sleep in winter.

I have not used any artificial aids to get over this syndrome, but it is likely that extra dosages of Vitamin D could help. Bbut then, I am not a doctor and also not a quack to give any prescription to anyone!

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