Most of the words I know for the darker months of the year are complaints. Gloomy, dreary, dismal. We talk about getting through winter, as though it's something to be endured until the clocks go forward again. I wanted a word that did the opposite, one that describes the dark part of the year and finds something beautiful in it. That word is ‘kaamos’.
Kaamos is Finnish for the polar night - the stretch of winter in Lapland, north of the Arctic Circle, when the sun stays below the horizon 24/7. It isn't total blackness, which is what I find so lovely about it. Around midday the sky often holds a soft blue twilight, the snow seems to glow from within, and the colours of the landscape turn quiet and muted. Everything slows down.
From what I've read, kaamos is treated as a season with its own mood, a time for staying in, gathering people around a warm room, lighting candles and looking after each other until the light comes back. The word holds the darkness and the stillness, the turning inward, and all the small rituals people build to bring warmth into it. It's as much about resilience as it is about the dark.
That was the starting point for the scent. I could have made something that smelt of snow and pine forest, but I kept coming back to the rituals, the warmth you make for yourself when the world outside is cold. That led me to the winter pomander, the old tradition of an orange studded with cloves, hung in rooms and tucked into cupboards for generations. It smells of a house that's been lived in and looked after.
Sweet orange leads, bright and a little sugary, like a bit of daylight in a dark room. Around it sit the warming spices: clove bud, cinnamon bark, cinnamon leaf and nutmeg. I use both cinnamons on purpose. The bark is sweeter and rounder, like a cinnamon stick in a hot drink, while the leaf is sharper and closer to clove, and gives the blend some bite. Nutmeg softens the edges with a dry, faintly creamy warmth.
Underneath sit the darker notes, which add wintry depth to the blend. Vetiver is the root of a grass and smells earthy, a bit like damp soil after rain. Cade is distilled from juniper wood and is beautifully smoky, like a fire in the next room once it has burned down. Two resins, frankincense carterii and benzoin extract, add a warm, balsamic glow, and the whole blend is finished with smooth vanilla.
The candle is made using only white beeswax and coconut oil scented entirely with essential oils, and is poured by hand in Somerset into each refillable stainless steel vessel. When it burns down, a refill means you can keep the same vessel going right through the winter.
A candle can't replace the sun. However, I do think the darker months have a beauty of their own, and that a warm room, a few people and a flame can be a very good way to enjoy them. I can only offer my reading of kaamos, and one word never carries everything. If you're Finnish, or you've spent a winter in the north, I'd love to hear what it means to you.
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