He dwelt upon the unseen and the unknown till the burden of eternity appeared to be crushing him. Everything in the Northland had that crushing effect- the absence of life and motion; the darkness; the infinite peace of the brooding land; the ghastly silence, which made the echo of each heart-beat a sacrilege; the solemn forest which seemed to guard an awful, inexpressible something, which neither word nor thought could compass... The magnitude of all things appalled him. Everything partook of the superlative save himself - the perfect cessation of wind and motion, the immensity of the snow-covered wilderness, the height of the sky and the depth of the silence. - from "In a Far Country" by Jack London
There's also a scene from the story where the two main characters, stuck in a cabin together for the winter (and you know that's going to end well), get a first brief taste of sunlight, a noontime that looks like dawn, after weeks of complete northern darkness.
Their eyes were fixed upon the north. Unseen, behind their backs, behind the towering mountains of the south, the sun swept toward the zenith of another sky than theirs. Sole spectators of the mighty canvas, they watched the false dawn slowly grow. A faint flame began to glow and smoulder. It deepened in intensity, ringing the changes of reddish-yellow, purple, and saffron... a miracle, the sun rising in the north! Suddenly, without warning and without fading, the canvas was swept clean. There was no color in the sky. The light had gone out of the day.
