"We are moving towards the end of a year where many of us have experienced disappointments and perhaps a feeling of something being lost. In our part of the world one could easily start feeling as if the daily decrease in daylight hours is a double underlining of the misery that will be forever associated with 2020. There is no point in sweeping it under the rug; the pandemic has been, and still is, a total and utter bummer. It is affecting, and in the most negative of ways: our basic social needs, our instinct to move around travel, to do our job; you want to do it - Corona will stop you. But we do our best, and we find new paths in the dark. That is what humans do - and more often than not we are helped by not only those close to us - but by larger groups formed and joined by common interests, for example. The enormity of the support, and the strength of the community we have felt and experienced as Enslaved this year, has been fantastic. With fond new memories of a vibrant and expanding Enslaved-community throughout the very same year that tried so hard to bring us all down - perspectives start to change and brighten: these shorter and shorter days are definitely not a count-down to some impending doom on the horizon: they are reminders of the change that lies ahead of us. They will keep on darkening until that Shortest of Days - Winter Solstice. Whether you are guided and inspired by old traditions and rites like us, or if you prefer to stick to the scientific observations of Earth’s poles reaching their maximum tilt away from the Sun, before starting the way back towards warmer and sunnier days - we hope you will join us in what we expect to the be a very special and highly charged celebration of the Death and Rebirth of the Sun this year. It does not matter if the troubles are not “over” yet - we will celebrate through music and our bonds; that we have made it through 2020, that we are still here, that we still have our community and that we make each other strong. That strength will carry over, into yet another new solar cycle - and make us ready to face whatever the coming times have in store for us."

Enslaved's Ivar Bjørnson