Wintering: SCANDI STYLE

No matter how gruesome it gets, no weather is too bad for a Scandinavian to embrace. Here's how to make the cold and dark an ally – not an enemy.

- By GRETA SOLOMON

As a former expat, I lived through six winters in Norway. The second one was when I'd just given birth to my daughter. It was a manageable zero degrees that day, but by the next week, it had dropped to minus 10. My midwife told me to get out and walk with my baby, and I was horrified at the thought of steering a pram on icy roads and freezing my milk supply.

I'd moved to Oslo from London for love, after marrying a Norwegian man. I naively thought I'd take all the best bits of my London life and plant them somewhere new. That didn't happen. And each winter seemed to echo the death of a part of myself.

Three years later, when the temperature dipped to minus 20, I didn't know how I would survive, especially as my daughter's nursery was on the other side of town. But something inside me shifted. I finally got the memo. The only way to make it through a deep chill is to embrace it.