In sum,

Many people imagine that the sun is necessary to human happiness and that the South Sea islanders must be the gayest, most leisurely and most contented folk on earth.
No notion could be more falsely romantic, for happiness has nothing to do with climate; these Eskimos afforded decisive proof that happiness is a disposition of the spirit. Here was a people living in the most rigorous climate in the world, in the most depressing surroundings imaginable haunted by famine in a grey and sombre landscape sullen with the absence of life; shivering in their tents in the autumn, fighting the recurrent blizzard in the winter, toiling and moiling fifteen hours a day merely in order to get food and stay alive. Huddling and motionless in their igloos through this interminable night, they ought to have been melancholy men, men despondent and suicidal; instead , they were a cheerful people, always laughing, never weary of laughter.
A man is happy , in sum, when he is leading the life that suits him; and neither warmth nor comfort has anything to do with it.