“Day” and “night” in the high north

Abstract In Nordic countries, the change of seasons strongly affects the ratio of light and dark per day. The effect is greatest around the summer and winter solstices, when in the far northern latitudes the sun does not set at all in midsummer and does not rise at all in midwinter. The changing hours of daylight have profound practical and psychological effects throughout the year, creating disjuncts between the rhythm of natural light and the rhythms of human life. Using NSM semantic explications and cultural scripts, this study examines the meanings and uses of Finnish words for ‘light’, ‘day’, ‘night’, and related expressions. Our goals are three-fold: (i) to unpack some salient Finnish ways of thinking and speaking about light and life; (ii) to decide to what extent Finnish semantic molecules in this domain differ in meaning from their counterparts in languages from other parts of the world; (iii) to explore how maintaining the daily rhythms of life is aided by multiple kinds of scaffolding: lexical, conceptual, social, and technological. Close examination of patterns of lexical polysemy and phraseology is required. We draw on Finnish lexical resources ( Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish , Finnish Language Text Bank) and research literature, and dialogical discussions between the authors, who are native speakers of Finnish (Vanhatalo) and English (Goddard).