Midnight Sun Reflections. This is long. Before reading, ensure you have a full glass beside you.

One of our objectives on this trip was to visit the North Cape in Norway on or around the 21st. June and experience the Midnight Sun. Before setting out, we had already decided that on or around the longest day would do, as we anticipated a bunfight of elderly travellers and the more adventurous spirits from Stonehenge. A mixture of Old Age and New Age, in fact. There wasn’t any particular need to be there on the longest day/shortest night as at the North Cape there is continuous daylight from late May to the end of July. Someone we met en route told us that they had been there in a period of 155 hours of continuous sunshine, without any cloud.

Time for a definition. At the Arctic Circle on 21st.June the Sun appears to touch, but does not sink below, the horizon. Since we all know that daylight lasts beyond sunset, it follows that 24-hour daylight exists below (but not that far below) the Arctic Circle. Also, the further North one goes, the longer will be the period of uninterrupted daylight – but not, of course, sunshine, as even in the Arctic summer there can be clouds. So, when we went on the two elk safaris and, on the second night, found two elks, 30 or so miles below the Arctic Circle it was still fully light when we went to bed at 1:30 in the morning. One night, a few days later (or was it one day, a few nights later?) when I got up at 2 in the morning to have a piss in the communal toilets of the campsite, I was little nonplussed to find that it was as light as it would have been at 9 a.m. (Don’t worry, I was fully clothed.) Anyway, to describe what the midnight sun is really like – although you may have seen the photos we took at Inari in Finnish Lapland elsewhere on the blog, which give a misleading impression since we took them into the sun and consequently everything which isn’t actually the sun is in shadow (well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?), in fact it was a bright, sunny “day”- you have to do what we did and watch it in action. I suppose we had our mesmerised eyes fixed on the sun from twenty to midnight to twenty past and watched the sun dip to about one apparent inch above the horizon and then, foreseeably but not foreseen by us, start to rise again. And nobody else on the site stood with us and watched! Just Ruth and I! It was what they expected. It was also what we “knew” but didn’t really “know” until we had been there. And it has happened every year since the Earth was formed. And always will.

The North Cape had to be visited. It is about 350 miles above the Arctic Circle. It is widely supposed to be the most northerly place in Europe and further north than all of Alaska and most of Siberia, although this is rather contentious since there is another headland on the same island a few feet further north than the North Cape, but it is not so dramatic, slinking gradually into the Arctic Ocean whereas the North Cape is a 1,000 foot cliff, which, like all sheer drops , is impossible to see from the top, unless you are falling from it, and then you don’t get the chance to tell anyone what it was like – or at least anyone mortal. Also the word “island” is a bit of a giveaway. There are other islands still in Europe which are further north, Spitsbergen, for example. But the North Cape is driveable by ox cart, car or motorhome whereas Knivskjellodden (the other headland - which is the headland shown in the last photo in the Post, "More North Cape") has to be hiked 9km. to and back again and is much harder to spell and pronounce. Another problem with the North Cape is that, being the height and latitude that it is, being “ à la limite de la terre et de la mer, à la limite du monde visible et invisible” - to refer to another place - and being a place at the junction of two seas, it is terribly subject to sudden changes of visibility. (There’s an awful convergence of language and symbolism here, which I am too simple a soul to wish to explore, but the Sami [Lapps] hold it in some reverence.) People we met who had visited it before said that they had been in bright sunshine one moment and been unable to see the caravan next to them the next. So we weren’t too bothered if, when Ruth and I got to the Cape, the weather conditions weren’t ideal. We were lucky that, when we arrived, there was bright light and when we left, there was a brief moment when the headlands for 20 – 30 miles in each direction could be seen.

What’s being at the North Cape like? Well, it’s a big car park at the top of a cliff that it costs £20 to park in. They actually give you two days as the weather is usually crap. It’s got about 50 or 60 motorhomes waiting for the weather to get better. It’s got luxury coaches from all over Europe filled with pensioners hoping to see the midnight sun before they die, and failing. It’s cold, windy and miserable (except when it’s heavenly).

That’s what it’s like when you’re there. When you are coming away you realise what you have seen. As you travel up from Norway or Finland, the trees get shorter, reindeer appear at the sides of the road and the trees peter out altogether. We didn’t see any trees in 24 hours’ driving. You arrive unexpectedly alongside the Porsangerfiord which was startlingly brightly lit by the sun and bordered by nets for drying fish. The hilltop crests were still crusted in late June with the greying remains of winter snows as were the dark valleys. There was still more than 50% snow cover. To get to MagerØya, the island which the North Cape is on, you have to drive through 4 tunnels. The first one is old, single carriageway (as are they all) quite dark and wet. I stopped, as I thought I had driven into a service area by mistake, but no, it was the main road. The other 3 were not so bad but the longest one is 6.78km. long and costs £50 to drive through, under the sea, both ways. They aren’t a lot of fun to drive through in a motorhome or, Ruth tells me, to be driven through. (That totals to nearly £130, for those who care about these things). A lot of money, but barely enough to buy two beers in Norway. (And a lot better than 2 Norwegian beers.)

When you’re watching TV and seeing pictures of crashing falls of water you see them as that; pictures. But they were there beside and around us, with us, and we with them. Oddly, since it was a place previously unknown to either of us, both Ruth and I felt deprived of something we could not name when we had separated ourselves from it and got back to what seemed more normal.

It’s getting a bit spiritual, isn’t it? If so, take it your own way.