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Since darkness doesn’t naturally occur during the Arctic summer, many Norwegians create it themselves-with eye masks, covered window glass, blackout curtains, and the like. Here are a few strategies we can all use to help establish and maintain healthy sleep habits, even if we don’t personally experience the midnight sun and white nights of summer in Arctic Norway. So how do Norwegians manage to get enough sleep during the summer months near the Arctic Circle? What could we learn from them, even if we don’t live at the top of the world? We increasingly spend more time on gadgets, which means we get less sleep ourselves, and less darkness. In the summertime, bedtime can be as late as 5:00 AM for founder Joar Opheim and his family. Night swimming in the West Norwegian fjords in Krystad, Lofoten. Without darkness, our sleep-inducing bodily processes simply don’t get signaled. This can be a health issue, as there are few things more essential to mind/body health than restorative sleep, and few things more essential to sleep than darkness. But it can also make getting sleep and adequate rest more challenging, since light is the strongest external cue that affects our bodies’ internal clocks/circadian rhythms. The constant light of the Arctic summer certainly inspires increased activity and energy, especially after a long, dark winter in which Norwegians don’t see the sun much, if at all. For Oslo residents-and many Norwegians-summer is the season of “white nights.” Although the sun does set below the horizon there, it never gets quite low enough to turn the sky black.Ī glimpse of the midnight sun rising at 2:00 AM in Krystad, Lofoten.
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At the relatively southern latitude of Oslo, twilight is as dark as it gets from May to July. In the endless daylight off the Lofoten Islands, you can watch the sun “set” just above the horizon before watching it start to rise in the sky again-a phenomenon known as “midnight sun.”Įven below the Arctic Circle, summer nights in Norway aren’t all that dark. In Nordkapp, one of the northernmost points in Europe, the sun doesn’t set for 75 days each summer. In fact, this time of year the sun never sets at all for many Norwegians. And nowhere are the days of summer longer than in Arctic Norway-a place near and dear to our hearts here at Nordic Naturals.
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Some of the best things about summer are the longer, activity-filled days.