The remarkable and unsettling effects of refraction may in fact have lent some credence to the notion that Inuit actions - such as playing 'cat's cradles' (ajaraaq) in the late fall or 'cup-and-pin' (ajagaq) after the Sun's return - could delay its setting or speed its rising in the sky.

In extreme cases the effects of refraction can cause the Sun to suddenly appear above the horizon long after it should have set. Parry observed this phenomenon in Igloolik during the winter of 1822 and describes it with suitable wonder:

At apparent noon, on the 2d of December, six days after the sun had independently of the effects of refraction set to us for a period of more than seven weeks, we caught a glimpse of its upper limb from the deck of the Fury, about one-sixteenth of its whole disk being visible above the low land to the southward.

It is impossible not to acknowledge the benevolence as well as to admire the wisdom of the law which, among its varied and wonderful effects, displayed throughout the works of nature, contrives to shorten, by nearly a whole fortnight, the annual absence of the cheering luminary from the frozen regions of the earth, and thus contributes so essentially to the welfare and enjoyment of their numerous inhabitants. {Parry 1824:383}

The sixteenth-century Dutch explorer Willem Barents, wintering on Novaya Zemlya, was even more fortunate than Parry. His expedition was blessed with the Sun's return a full twelve days ahead of schedule.

Barents, who attributed the event to divine intervention, would not have warmed to Barry Lopez's informed explanation: 'What they saw that January day, we now know, was not the sun but only a solar image. ... Such images, now called Novaya Zemlya images, are common in the Arctic. They serve as a caution against precise description and expectation, a reminder that the universe is oddly hinged {Lopez 1986:24}."

(Arctic Sky)