Woman in Antarctica Explains How She Finds Sunlight During the Long Polar Winter

Every year, from March to September, a 43-mile stretch of the planet becomes trapped in darkness. Polar winter, scientists like to call it. This chunk, named Ross Island, is one of the most decorated fragments advertised by the Antarctic continent. Its elongated ice shelf stretches for miles and miles, with icebergs that calve off and spill into the glacial lakes. At its southernmost tip, the cool, icy land bears the ferocious Mount Erebus that spits magma and lava on its frozen blanket. A woman named Sara Zollo (@lil.sarita) posted footage on TikTok recording herself trying to get some “light” in Antarctica in summer this year.

People usually stay in Antarctica when they are collecting meteorites, exploring glaciers, or drilling ice. Here, at Ross Island, Zollo worked as a scientist and a part-time barista, near the McMurdo Station tucked on the Southern tip of Ross Island. At this time, typically, the island doesn’t receive any Sun and is therefore engulfed in pitch black darkness.

Just as plants need sunlight to produce their own food, humans need sunlight for their survival too. Living without light for a prolonged stretch can make a human devitalized. In the footage, Zollo revealed how she and probably her co-workers trick their brains by walking to a “light room.” “You live in Antarctica. Haven’t seen sunlight in two months. So you walk to the happy light room for the daily dose of ‘sunlight,’” she wrote in the caption. At the mention of “light room,” viewers were expecting to see a room full of plants, sunlight sensors, and maybe some chairs for basking in warmth. But the footage was quite unexpected, even shocking to many people.

The video opens with Zollo clad in a puffy, red overcoat embellished with NDF's logo, an attached cap covering her head, black open-toe sandals, and a pair of black trousers. She totters through a corridor and scampers down a spiral of staircases, ultimately arriving at a door. She opens the brown wooden door to reveal a suspended grill floor, bordered by a fence railing. From the open balcony protected by the fence, the footage reveals glimpses of neighboring houses and a spacious yard illuminated by glowing yellow lights.

The woman keeps scuttling forward, down a staircase and ahead across a stony road mildly blanketed with creamy-looking ice. Shrouded in night-like darkness, the ice appears like an eerie cave with shadows dancing on its undulating charcoal-grey walls. For a moment, the footage goes blank, the camera powerless. Then a frame pops up to reveal Zollo inside a closed space, likely brightened by artificial white lights. Like an adventurer trapped in a labyrinth, she keeps on tottering, opening and closing doors, descending and climbing.

Once again, the camera goes point blank, before jumping inside a room whose walls appear to be wallpapered with Temu’s nature-inspired flags and banners. Here and there, the floor is sprawling with work desks and old couches. Zollo tosses her backpack on one of these couches. The ceiling of this room is flecked with several square-shaped downlights. Some people referred to this room as a “kirkasvalolamppu,” which translates to a “bright light lamp,” per Substack.    

Seemingly normal, the footage sent jitters down viewers’ spines, some of them jostling in virtual claustrophobia. “This would send me into psychosis,” commented @brunaxcosta. @kabis_11 likened the footage to the feeling of being a bird in a pet store. @tianalopez said, “I was expecting a really cool, scientifically advanced room that had a sunlight simulator or something.”

Some viewers launched a discussion on depression induced by the lack of sunlight in these polar regions. “I’m depressed just by the state of the sunlight room,” said @Thais. 

You can follow Sara (@lil.sarita) on TikTok for more video logs from Antarctica.

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