The Light26 May – 20 Jul

Midnight Sun

Eight weeks without a sunset

North of the Arctic Circle the sun stops setting altogether. At Abisko that is roughly the twenty-sixth of May to the twentieth of July — eight weeks in which it circles the sky without touching the horizon.

The disorientation is real and it is worth planning around. Time stops being something you feel and becomes something you check. People eat at odd hours, walk at one in the morning because it is light and they are not tired, and then sleep badly for the first two nights.

Blackout curtains exist everywhere up here and they work. Use them from the first night rather than the third. An eye mask in the bag is a small thing that makes the difference between a week that runs on its own rhythm and one that runs on none.

The mountains at midnight

The compensation is that the mountains are open at an hour when nobody is on them. A fell walk that starts at nine in the evening is not an eccentricity here, it is the sensible time: the light is low and sideways, the wind has usually dropped, and the mosquitoes are worse earlier.

This is also the season the north stops being about winter. The snow goes off the low ground in June, the birch comes into leaf in about a fortnight, and everything that grows does it at once because it has ten weeks.

Bring layers for cold anyway. The sun is up but it is low, and when it swings behind a mountain the temperature goes with it.

Build a journey around this View Our Journeys

All experiences