Growing up in central Michigan, followed by career years mostly in the mid Atlantic, I see both sides to immersion in white winter and its short days.
In the north, Winter is an opportunity to shift gears, don different threads, and turn your attention to cold, footing, visibility, and gloom.
But there's also skating on prepared rinks and for miles along snow covered frozen rivers, hiking and cross country skiing through thick stands of snow covered pines in dead silence at 15F, and cold play in a wealth of activities that exist only where cold and ice can pile up and last for months. And then you return home, slip into toasty togs, and warm yourself from within with a host of drinks that can't fully be enjoyed any other way.
It does. But after growing up in freezing winter Russia, then cold rain Holland and now living in California, even though I do miss some of those wintery things, I’m sure glad to be back to no season coastal California every time I spend even a few days in a cold/dark northern hemisphere place.
Note that even central Michigan is south of much of Europe. Today Lansing has the same day length as Rome, a full hour extra daylight today compared with Berlin, and two hours more than Oslo.
I don't like the short days in Denmark, but I'd dislike them less if there was the opportunity for hiking etc in the snow.
I was thinking something like this. I moved from Indiana to Trondheim, Norway 4.5 years back (Oslo is a 45ish minute flight south). Sometimes I'd just love to have a nice, "long" michigan winter day.
In the north, Winter is an opportunity to shift gears, don different threads, and turn your attention to cold, footing, visibility, and gloom.
But there's also skating on prepared rinks and for miles along snow covered frozen rivers, hiking and cross country skiing through thick stands of snow covered pines in dead silence at 15F, and cold play in a wealth of activities that exist only where cold and ice can pile up and last for months. And then you return home, slip into toasty togs, and warm yourself from within with a host of drinks that can't fully be enjoyed any other way.
Winter does have a certain magic to it.