More Fun, Less Sleep : Midnight Sun: It Lifts the Spirit

At midnight on this headland jutting toward the Arctic, the sun hovers like a pale gold disk several degrees above the horizon.

If you can see it, that is. For fog and mist often shroud the cape, which is regarded as the northernmost tip of Europe. It is well north of the Arctic Circle, in the Land of the Midnight Sun.

But even if obscured, the sun is undeniably out there. Silvery light suffuses the bowl of the sky, burnishing the pewter surface of the Barents Sea.

And seen or unseen, the midnight sun alters the metabolism of the people. Life quickens perceptibly after the long, dark winter, and there is an urgency in the old exhortation to make hay while the sun shines.

Crammed Into a Few Weeks

“When summer comes,” a military man stationed near the Soviet border said, “everything explodes. Animals, birds, trees, flowers, people--all have to live quickly for these few weeks before autumn arrives and brings the curtain down.”

Consequently, those in Norway’s far north, the area called Finnmark--and, in a way, the rest of Scandinavia as well--expand their social lives considerably. Restaurants and bars stay open much later, people get out and around, many go to bed much later and sleep a good deal less.

“I am getting fewer hours of sleep most of these nights,” said a nurse who was visiting her parents in the northern capital of Tromso.

Halvard Kvamsdal, the deputy mayor of Kirkenes, an iron-mining town close to the Soviet border, said the other evening: “I went salmon fishing until 2 in the morning yesterday. I didn’t even finish dinner until close to midnight. In winter, I’d eat at 5 or 6 p.m.”

‘Everyone Is Happy’

In the fishing village of Honningsvag, 16-year-old Hilde Storhaug said: “Everyone is happy when the summer comes, particularly the older folks. Our spirits are lifted. We just hope that the sun comes out during the summer, because we know that it only lasts from May to August. In November, darkness will come and stay until late January.”

But not everyone adjusts so easily to the midnight sun.

“I get confused at first,” admitted a man from southern Norway who now lives in Bodo. “My body tells me to go to sleep at night, but my mind says no; it’s still light out. In effect, my body clock doesn’t know when to tell me to go to sleep.”

The locals sense this problem among outsiders, but they feel that they are able to adapt more easily.

As Deputy Mayor Kvamsdal put it: “I change my schedule. I sleep only three or four hours during the summer, going to bed at, say, 3 a.m. I might try to get in a nap during the afternoon.”

So, in a way, Nordic people adopt Mediterranean hours for the period of the midnight sun. Even in Oslo, the capital, people promenade through the streets until well after midnight. Crowds stroll the main thoroughfare and drink beer at an outdoor garden spot known as The Student’s Park, adjacent to Oslo University.

Lighter Night Sky

While Oslo is south of the Arctic Circle and, therefore, never actually sees the midnight sun, it nevertheless gets a lovely, ethereal light in the sky all night long, because of the way the Earth is tilted on its axis.

“We learn to live with the darkness, too,” said an assistant at the Honningsvag Museum. “For those of us who live here, we accept the winter, though many of the older people get depressed in the middle of the long night.

“I like the winter because all the snow around then reflects the light. And also there are things to do when you are young.”

Like rural communities everywhere, the villages of northern Norway try to find ways to keep their young happy. The town fathers of Honningsvag have set up discotheques for young people in order to afford them a place to meet in the evening. Some communities have non-alcoholic discotheques for children under 18.

Hilde Storhaug said the community encourages young people to go to college--and to come back. She hopes to go to college at Tromso, but she thinks she will go on to work outside her home village--somewhere in the south--before she decides whether to come back to live permanently.

Not Necessarily Greener

Parents in the north, she said, have a saying: “The wind blows everywhere,” meaning that the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side.

At best, life is hard here, even though the tough life of a fisherman has become easier with automation. But this means that fishing is disappearing as a way of life, because the cod and capelin tend to be caught by the big trawlers operating from southern ports.

In Honningsvag, the service industries are now more important than fishing, especially the services devoted to tourism. And these northern communities like to say they are situated “at the top of the world” as a way of encouraging tourism.

Historically the North Cape has long fascinated the adventurous tourist. It was given its name in 1553 by a British explorer, Richard Chancellor, who was seeking a Northeast Passage to Asia.

For centuries, the only approach to the cape was by sea, but in 1956 a road from Honningsvag was completed across the plateau.

The area has always had a certain attractiveness that was lacking in Alaska, Greenland and Siberia. This is because the Gulf Stream, a warm current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and moves across the Atlantic, runs up along the Norwegian coast, maintaining an ice-free area offshore. In summer there are yellow and red wildflowers blooming everywhere. People grow corn, strawberries and roses around their houses.

In the past few years, a controversial tourist center has been constructed on the 1,000-foot-high North Cape promontory. Conservationists argue that no structure should defile the famous outcropping.

Welcome Coffeehouse

Yet for many years there has been a coffeehouse at the edge of the cliff to warm and protect visitors from the Arctic blasts that often hit the rock, even in midsummer.

“Our visitors need somewhere to sit down and have a drink and a meal,” said Christer Granlund, an assistant director of the North Cape complex. “They also need something to see in case of bad weather when they arrive here.”

Granlund frankly admits that the foggy Arctic weather blots out the midnight sun at least 50% of the time. Other estimates are even higher.

To entertain visitors, many of whom have come long distances, the new complex has installed a souvenir shop, a post office, a restaurant and a theater with a panoramic presentation of what the midnight sun looks like.

Overnight Accommodations

There are overnight accommodations, the nearest in Honningsvag, which has hotels, guest houses and a dock where cruise ships tie up while passengers are bused to the cape.

Other cities in Norway’s northern region are also calling attention to their delights these days: the fiords, snow-clad mountains, salmon streams, offshore islands and the general cheery disposition of the people.

“Right now we take the midnight sun for granted,” a hotel keeper said. “We think it is for the tourist. But in a few weeks, when the sun first dips below the horizon again, all of us here will be standing on the hills to watch.”