La nuit chez les Inuit canadiens du haut Arctique : une nuit véritable, mais en trompe-l’œil

• Main Author: Guy Bordin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Italian
• Published: Firenze University Press 2019
• Subjects: night; darkness; light; Inuit; Canada; high latitudes; geo; socio; Arctic; Arctique*; inuit; midnight sun
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.13128/bsgi.v1i2.517; https://doaj.org/article/61d2dbb017e04deeb1827e0d540f492c

For many observers, night in high latitudes can be summed up schematically as the seasonal astronomical phenomenon called “arctic night” and its spectacular alternation with its counterpoint, the so-called “midnight sun”. But what about the day-to-day night of people living in these regions? What are the relations they establish between the seasonal “dark-light” cycles and the circadian “night-day” cycles? In this article, we will see how the northern Inuit in the eastern Canadian Arctic combine these two dimensions to produce a concept of night whose essence lies elsewhere than in the sole darkness.