Living Above the Arctic Circle—and Enjoying It!
“BE BACK SOON!”
These words, appearing on the front page of the Norwegian daily Finnmarken last November 20, were addressed to the sun.
The reason?
Well, on that late November day the sun went under the southern horizon of Vadsö—where the paper is published—and was not to be seen in that north Norwegian town for the next two months. And in towns and villages farther north, such as Vardö, Baatsfjord, Berlevåg and Hammerfest (the northernmost town in the world), the long wintry night lasts even longer than that.
When the sun comes back in these places after its long absence, it is given a real welcome! In the mining town of Kirkenes, close to the Russian border, schoolchildren march up to a mountain just to look at the sun. In Vadsö, when the sun shines through an opening between two mountains for some five minutes, schoolchildren are given the day off—the town celebrates. Still more to the north, in Vardö, the guns of the 14th-century fortress of Vardöhus contribute to the joy with a thundering salute.
“We’re moving in the right direction, towards summer,” people will say—in January.
When the Sun Won’t Leave
There is a brighter side to the picture, however. The reason for the joy in Vadsö, after having glimpsed the sun in the dark wintry January, is the knowledge that this will lead to long, long days from late March to mid-September, yes, even to a period when the sun will never set—from mid-May to the end of July.
Most people, living around the mid-belt of the globe, have their pace and pattern of life governed by a changeless rhythm of the rising and setting sun. But north of the Arctic Circle—as well as in Antarctica down under—this rhythm is broken during the year.
Since the earth is tilted on its axis, for six months the North Pole faces toward the sun, in eternal daylight, while the South Pole has a half-year-long night. So, if you lived on the North Pole the year around, you would have a six-month day, from March 21 to September 23, followed, unfortunately, by a six-month night of icy cold and ferocious blizzards. The farther south one lives from the North Pole, the shorter the midnight sun period will be. Coming to the Arctic Circle, located some 1,630 miles (2,600 km) from the North Pole, there is one day a year when the sun does not set all night, and, likewise, in the winter, one day when it does not rise.
What Makes the Night Bearable
Nowhere else on earth do so many people live as close to the North Pole as do those in Norway. The Arctic Circle bisects Norway so that a third of the country is above the Arctic Circle. Actually, this third lies between parallels where we find the icy and most forbidding areas of Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Siberia.
However, the warm Gulf Stream, which flows up the entire west Norwegian coast, creates a temperate climate in Norway that is not found so far north elsewhere in the world. Coastal districts enjoy mild winters and cool summers, and all ports are ice free during the winter. The land is pierced by numerous inlets and fjords, with large and small islands along a coastline about 12,000 miles (19,200 km) long.
Of the Norwegian population of 4,000,000, roughly 10 percent live north of the Arctic Circle, in the three northern provinces of Nordland, Troms and Finnmark. Evidently, people have enjoyed these areas for a long time, for traces of human activity indicate that hardy fishermen and hunters came here just as early as others came to inhabit the southern coasts of the country. Today, you will still find sturdy fishermen and hunters, as well as farmers, miners, shipbuilders, sailors, and quite a few factory workers above the circle.
Born Optimists?
A Danish lady, who moved north years ago, says that the Norwegian Northerner is a born optimist: “During a cold and wet summer he will say, ‘We may yet have a fine fall.’ And when that fails, he says, ‘Without doubt we’ll get a mild, fine winter.’ Then, when he is buried in snow and the blizzards are raging, he’ll venture the opinion, ‘Spring will be early this year.’ And when spring arrives with subzero weather and snowfall right up to midsummer eve, the matter is settled, ‘With summer coming that late, it will be warm and fine.’”
Optimists or not, people up here generally have a light temper. Jokes come easy and problems are not exaggerated. More often than not they are open, friendly and generous, and so an elderly Vadsö citizen, when asked why he enjoyed living up north, said: “Because of the people. And nature. Looking at the ocean, fishing in the rivers, climbing the steep hillsides or wandering over the mountain plateau—all of it gives you a unique sense of freedom.”
A younger worker from a Finnmark fishing factory explained: “Nothing can be compared to fishing in a lake on the mountain plateau. It’s so free and open. I’d feel choked with a lot of trees around me.”
“Light Is Sweet”
A scripture close to the heart of Bible students up here is Ecclesiastes 11:7: “Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun.” (Revised Standard Version) The dazzling beauty of the midnight sun does more than appeal to the eyes—it contributes to health.
“When the dark season approaches, people will come asking for sleeping pills,” Dr. Tore Ask of Vadsö told us. “Many suffer from sleeplessness, they do not get naturally tired, as the body does not get the natural external signals that it’s time for sleep. It’s dark all the time—awfully hard to get up in the morning, and the feeling of tiredness will be with them all through the day. It’s a nervous strain for many. On the other hand, the light season builds people up in many ways and helps them to endure the winter darkness.”
Dr. Ask, who came from southern Norway, says that he was immediately attracted to the land and the light: “I was so stimulated by the sun that I did not feel any urge to go to bed. And so it is for everybody. People have so much to attend to in the hectic summer weeks—in the garden, in the house, with a car or a boat—so they work in the sunlight until long after midnight.”
A Still Sweeter Light
Grethe (Danish), her husband Karl-Erik (Swedish), and the Norwegian couple Aashild and Öivind have found that the open, friendly and hospitable people also respond favorably to another kind of light—the sweet message from the Bible telling of a paradise earth close at hand. As full-time publishers of Jehovah’s Witnesses, they came to the fishing town of Baatsfjord in January 1975. A congregation was established, and just five years later the congregation numbered 25 eager proclaimers of Bible truth.
“In addition to the 3,000 inhabitants of Baatsfjord, our territory includes fishing villages 25, 50 and 70 kilometersa from here,” says Aashild. “In the wintertime roads are closed, and we use the coastal line steamer to get to one of these villages. We leave on Sunday night, use the entire Monday preaching and conducting Bible studies in the village, and return by steamer on Monday night.”
Of their activity in the summer, she notes: “A group of us were in a remote district, using a small boat to reach isolated houses. The sun was shining, and people were working, so we kept visiting people until half an hour after midnight.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Norway now have 29 congregations, numbering 570 publishers north of the Arctic Circle. The Baatsfjord Congregation is the second-northernmost congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the world, after the Hammerfest Congregation in western Finnmark. All together, there are about 7,000 Kingdom publishers in Norway.
Grethe and Karl-Erik, being from Denmark and Sweden, have at times talked about leaving the barren mountains of Finnmark and seeking a warmer place. “We see many reasons for going south,” they explained, “but when we begin discussing the actual place where we could settle down, it becomes a little more difficult. And, invariably, we end up proposing some place here north of the Arctic Circle. Here we feel useful. We have the wide spaces, we have freedom and peace in beautiful surroundings, and we have lots of hospitable people interested in Bible truth.
“So, we’ll continue to look forward to more early springs, warm summers and brief, mild winters up here!”
[Footnotes]
a One kilometer = .6 mile.
[Picture on page 25]
Each day for two and a half months the sun never sets