The Arctic Circle and North Cape

Norway is a long, relatively narrow country which occupies the western edge of Scandinavia. A fair sized stretch of the country is above the Arctic Circle. The earth is tilted on its rotational axis relative to the plane of motion it makes about the sun. Because of this tilt, there is a region of the earth in the northern hemisphere where the sun never sets during the summer months. The Arctic Circle is that imaginary line above which there is at least one day where the sun never goes totally below the horizon. Its location actually moves a few feet a year due to the slight changes in the earth’s motion. We passed the Arctic Circle during day 4 of our cruise. To celebrate, that evening the captain hosted a “Bluenose” party and we all counted down the seconds until midnight. The sun was still high above the horizon! We all wandered around with noses pointed blue and enjoyed the fellowship.

It is a good thing that the cabin had heavy black out curtains. The sun actually shone for 141 hours straight. On either side of that window there was an hour or so of semi-darkness. They wouldn’t have even turned on the street lights at home in Springfield. All total, we saw 20ish hours of darkness during the entire trip and much of that was just a sort of dusky gloom. Ten of those total hours were on the first and last night as we made our way out of and into Amsterdam. We made several stops above the Arctic Circle. The most interesting was Honningsvag. In order to get there we had to travel around the North Cape which is touted as the northern-most point in Europe.

You could go on an excursion to the visitor’s center there, which you can barely see in the picture below, but we opted instead to wander around town a bit and got a view of the point as we passed it at sea. In truth, the North Cape and Honningsvag really aren’t all they claim. There is a nearby point on the same island in Norway that is a mile further north and large bits of Russia are more northerly if you want to identify them as parts of Europe. Also, it is on an island. Mainland Europe is further south. Finally, Barrow, Alaska is more northerly than Honningsvag and they claim to only be the 8th most northerly city.

Amy was excited when we passed a small group of reindeer outside of town during our wanderings.