Midnight sun never sets
Good night or good morning? What should you say when the sun never sets?
Midnight sun over the polar circle does not know the day is over. She’s there. Timeless. She shines. More beautiful than ever. Colorful in every yellow, orange, and purple variety you can imagine. How does the midnight sun taste on your skin? Do you remember the good times running around with your friends when you were 5 years old? Playing with sparkling water under the warming sun. How joyful and carlessness you felt. This is what the midnight sun does with you. Sweden is a country of raw beauty and dramatic landscapes, so it’s perhaps not a surprise to learn that one of the most remarkable natural phenomena occurs here. Dubbed as the land of the midnight sun, Sweden is one of the very few locations where sunset merges into the sunrise, with no darkness in between.
IT IS THE RIGHT TIME
Time does not matter so much. Being together with your beloved family or friends as long as the day runs. Take the wood, put it on the fire, look at how it burns. Slowly and warming. You just sit there and enjoy the moment of the midnight sun. One friend asked my ones, “why are you moving up to the polar circle. It is boring up there.” He was the manager of a global company. I’ve asked him: ”when did you sit at a fire the last time for 2 hours with no talking?” He said, “I’ve never done”. “You see, that’s why I want to spend the best time of my life here.”
The sun tickles you, and it is impossible to look into it, as it stands right at the horizon. She is bright! At the same time, the beautiful surrounding becomes quiet. You look at each other and know, it is lovely. We are doing good. We love each other. When you sit here, you can feel that your thoughts start to twist around. What is it worth aiming for? Do you still have the same values as you had one week ago when you were working in our job, maybe behind the desk? Yes, the midnight sun is inspiring. She brings the philosophy out of you. Serves you questions, which you may have never asked yourself. She is a doctor and a friend. Taking you on a journey back to the ground, back to the simple things. To the central values of life. Friendship, love, and respect of nature. A bird is flying into the sun, and it looks like she does eat him up until it flies out on the other side of the light again. He never sleeps when the day never lasts, and the sun is shining 24h. It seems nature never sleeps during that beautiful time of the year.
WHAT IS THE MIDNIGHT SUN?
In the simplest terms, it is precisely what it sounds like: the sun appearing at midnight. In the middle of the night, when the sky usually is a velvety blanket of darkness, the sun can clearly still be seen.
At the Arctic Circle, the midnight sun can be seen for 20 days at a time, continuously and without a break. The further you move south, the less time the midnight sun is visible for; in northern Sweden, it can be seen from late April until August.
As you move away from the Arctic, the strength of the midnight sun begins to weaken too. At the pole, the midnight sun will shine as brightly as if it were noon. In Sweden, the sunlight is dappled, more like the early evening before gradually brightening again for the following day. Therefore, although there’s no distinction between one day and the next and it remains light, there is a visible change in the brightness.
WHY DOES THE MIDNIGHT SUN OCCUR?
Above the polar circle, the sun shines for many hours without interruption over days. This phenomenon occurs every year as it’s not due to some strange aberration, but due to the physics of the earth and the sun.
The earth rotates completely every 24 hours, and it’s this movement that creates night and day. However, the length of daytime and night-time hours is not equal, and this is because the earth is tilted on its axis by 23.4 degrees. If it were utterly perpendicular, there would be a fixed night and day of 12 hours each.
In addition to the earth rotating around on its own axis, it’s also circling the sun. This orbit takes one year to complete. As it moves around the sun, the tilted axis means that at times part of the earth will be closer to the sun than others. It’s also why summer occurs at different times of the year in the north and south hemispheres.
During the summer months, when the hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, the poles experience sunlight for the full 24 hours. The further away from the pole, you travel, the more diluted the effect of the sun becomes. This is why European countries that aren’t as northerly as Sweden never get to experience the golden night-times of the midnight sun.
As the earth continues on its orbit and the tilt of the hemisphere gradually moves away from the sun, the darkness of night slowly returns.
During the winter season, the exact opposite of the midnight sun occurs, with polar nights. During polar nights the sun never rises fully, bathing the landscape in a bluish light, similar to twilight, during the daytime.
MIDNIGHT SUN PHILOSOPHY
Whether you’re usually a night owl or a lark, the midnight sun is a real sight to behold. The light is almost preternatural, casting an unusual glow over the night. Canoeing on the river taken under the midnight sun is an experience that you’ll never forget.
Here you can see the significant meaning in all the small things. Just sitting around the fire watching the flames, letting the sun surround you, experiencing the silence — we mean real silence. To only allow yourself to be still. It is a quality of life for real.
But perhaps most of all in the fast stillness of the wilderness of the arctic north, in the magical land of both the eternal light and eternal dark, something is regained, something that was once lost in the constant electronic draw of the digital world: