I’m in Tromsø, Norway. I met a foreign scientist. We were talking about solitude and the winter darkness when I asked how life was for him during COVID. He hesitated, then said something like:

“I am apolitical. I do not vote – I am never eligible – fine with me. I can hardly hear or read the local language, and if there was a queue for the vaccine then I assume I’m at the end of it. I went on as normal: I walked to my office every day. If there had been a lockdown, I would not have known. The streets had always been empty for me because of the unusual hours I work; I walk in the middle of the street – because of the ice and snow piled up on the footpath – all the way home, up the mountainside. The stores were always open and I never wore a mask; once I wore a mask: I ended up in the emergency room, I’d suffered a fall, on the ice; the doctor told me to take the mask off becuase I wouldn’t stop fidgeting with it; I’d put it on upside down, it kept sliding down because it didn’t pinch the nose. … And when I visited the post office to inquire why books I ordered from America weren’t arriving the staff lamented that everything arriving from America was quarantined. Quarantined?! We are in the midst of a pandemic, they said. I had forgotten, a year into the pandemic and it was still not on my mind. I am not riled up as some are about it, it hardly affected me, I hardly noticed. I just wanted my books.”

Updated: September 16, 2026 · Version: 0bd8989