Posted
on January 27, 2014
In
some places in northern Norway, the sun hasn't come up for weeks!
Today, perhaps, it shone again on a village somewhere for the first
time since the beginning of December. And in that village, today will
be declared a “Soldag”!
Soldag
means “Sun Day.” Never mind that it's Monday! Declaring a Sun Day
is like declaring a Snow Day—school is cancelled for the day, many
people skip work, and people enjoy the natural beauty of—in this
case—sunshine!
All
through late January and early February, the sun is making its first
appearance in weeks, and people are celebrating its comeback. Aside
from taking a day off of school and work, a masked ball is held at
night. A “prince of the sun” is chosen to preside over the ball,
and when the sun comes up, everyone removes their masks and light
fireworks!
(Those
of us who live in often-sunny places are always waiting and waiting
for the dark in order to shoot off fireworks, so it seems funny to
light fireworks when the sun comes up. But it's a celebration!
The
Arctic Circle
Did
you know that any land that lies between the Arctic Circle and the
pole has this sort of perpetual night in the winter and perpetual day
in the summer? This is because of the tilt of the Earth as it orbits
around the sun.
In
the Northern Hemisphere's wintertime, the entire hemisphere is tilted
away from the sun, so the days get shorter and shorter until the
shortest day of the year, December 21 or 22. Places that lie north of
the Arctic Circle have shorter and shorter days until the sun
disappears altogether for days or weeks or maybe even months!
As
I mentioned, the flip side of having no sun at all for weeks is
having 24 hours of sun in the summer. These polar regions are often
called “land of the midnight sun” because for days or weeks the
sun never sets!
To
learn more, check out the diagrams here or the video here.
 |
| Sometimes the Norwegian skies are lit, not by the sun, but by the aurora borealis. |
- In some places, there is some light even during the “Polar Night,” when the sun never rises, because the sun is just below the horizon. It's a kind of twilight day! But in other places, farther north, it stays much darker. In those places, the moon can become a very, very bright light in the sky! Check out this great compilation of time-lapse photography during the almost-four-month-long night at Ny-Alesund, an island that is ruled by Norway.
- This video has a lot of misspellings and other errors—I suspect that whoever made it isn't a native English-language speaker. But it shows a more twilight sort of Polar Night, as well as the midnight sun.
Also
on this date:
Thomas Crapper Day
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Nice post. that green light is called as Northern lights and it looks so amazing. We offer Northern lights photo tour to see this beauty.
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