The dark winter and the light summer

Stockholm, solstice to solstice

• Around 21 December: sunrise about 08:40, sunset about 14:50, just over 6 hours of daylight.
• Around 21 June: sunrise about 03:30, sunset about 22:10, about 18.5 hours of daylight. That is about 12.5 hours more than in December.
• Times shift by a few minutes depending on the source and the exact spot. Göteborg and Malmö are further south, so their winter days are a little longer. North of the Arctic Circle the sun stays up all night for weeks around midsummer and below the horizon for weeks in midwinter.
• Clocks go forward on the last Sunday of March and back on the last Sunday of October.

How Swedes cope with the dark

Light, mostly. In the dark months there are candles, stars and electric advent candlesticks in the windows of almost every home. Lucia on 13 December is a festival of light in the middle of the darkest weeks. Many people go outside at lunchtime for the daylight, use bright lamps indoors and keep winter busy with the sauna, skiing, skating and plenty of fika.

And the light summer

The bright nights are part of why Midsummer is such a big deal and why many Swedes take their holiday between June and August. People stay out late, bedrooms get blackout curtains, and the long evenings are for swimming, grilling and sitting outside.

Questions and answers

More about life in Sweden

• What it's like to live in Sweden
• How the bostadskö works
• What is fika?
• The tvättstuga and the arga lappar
• Swedish holidays through the year