Today is the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, and also Yule — one of the most important dates on the Asatru Pagan calendar. The sun is at its lowest point today and no other day of the year has less daylight. Read the full story

Temperature records continue to be broken in Iceland in the current heat wave. Saturday was the warmest day of the whole year so far – which is scarcely believable in the month of September. Read the full story

The electromagnetic storm which hit the upper atmosphere over Iceland, Scandinavia, Greenland and North America this week was the biggest since December 2006. Read the full story

Doctors in Finland are advising people to avoid dehydration as temperatures hit record highs in the Nordic country. As the heatwave currently cooking Europe shows little sign of easing up, health officials in Finland are reminding residents to drink at least one and a half times more water than usual. Read the full story

According to scientists in Oslo, the English may have only grown to develop pale skin in the past 5,500 years. Read the full story

The heat wave predicted to hit Iceland this weekend will almost certainly see temperatures rise above 20 degrees for the first time this year. It was in 1979, or exactly 30 years ago, that the temperature last failed to break the 20°C barrier during the first full six months of the year. The same chilly phenomenon occurred in 1961 and 1952. Read the full story

The ozone layer above Sweden was much denser this February than usual following years of dire warnings of dangerously low levels in the stratosphere. Just one year after recording the second-thinnest ozone layer in its history for a February, Swedish meteorologists have now discovered the ozone layer is thicker than it’s been in decades. Read the full story

In an alarming sign that global warming is an immediate and present reality, an ancient ice cave located at Lake Inari has melted this year for the first time in living memory. The cave, located on Finland’s island of Korkia-Maura has been a traditional Saami site for the summer storage of food such as fish and game for generations. Read the full story

A new study released by both American and Norwegian scientists claims that the physical benefits of being exposed to a little sunlight outweigh the negative risks of overexposure, particularly for population groups with low levels of vitamin D.

The study was published by a group of scientists working at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in conjunction with associates in Norway. The study found that moderate exposure to sunlight stimulated the production of vitamin D, a protective agent against several diseases and forms of cancer. For those with low levels of vitamin D, this extra exposure could be worth the risk of developing skin cancer from over exposure to the sun.

One of the study’s authors, Richard Setlow, is an expert on solar radiation and its link with skin cancer. He and his colleagues have long argued that people should protect themselves from the sun or face the risk of malignant melanoma.

“We know that solar radiation is the leading cause of skin cancer,” he said, adding that the same solar radiation is also the primary source of vitamin D for most humans.

“Since vitamin D has been shown to play a protective role in a number of internal cancers and possibly a range of other diseases,” he continued, “it is important to study the relative risks to determine whether advice to avoid sun exposure may be causing more harm than good in some populations.”

The population he has in mind are those living in northern regions such as Scandinavia where people often get only a limited exposure to sunlight. Australians, according to the study, produce 4.8 times more vitamin D from sun exposure than people in Scandinavia.

The study, which was published in the National Academy of Sciences, also considered alternative forms of acquiring vitamin D including through cod liver oil, milk and dietary supplements.