When I got to Finland I had the good fortune of arriving in the early hours of the morning when it almost becomes dark, and having had a few bottles of red wine so I quickly fell asleep. However, on the first day as it got late in the afternoon and I hadn't yet left the place I was staying I started to get jumpy and felt like getting outside and going for walk. I procrastinated for a while and then began to notice that as it got later - six o'clock, then seven, then eight - it wasn't actually getting any darker. When I finally did get out for a walk, it was still light when I returned at eleven, and I found myself eating dinner well after midnight. The strange thing is that whilst the sun slowly marches across the sky, and finally sets at around 9.30 or 10, the sun's arc is almost parallel to the horizon rather then perpendicular, so whilst out of sight it is tottering along just below the horizon it is still light enough to read a book outside pretty much all night.
This is around 12.30 am one night in Lapland.
Over the next five weeks, especially when I went further north and got even more daylight I started to realise the effects of constant daylight. The most obvious is that it is quite difficult to sleep when the sun is still shining. (It reminded me of when was a little tacker and Dad sent us to bed at 9 o'clock during summer and it was still light. The Morgans from over the road came and tapped on the window and made fun of us because we were in bed before dark !!!) Even when you do get to sleep it never seems to be that deep so a lot of the time you wander around during the day a little like a zombie. As a consequence the Finns are some of the biggest consumers of coffee in the world, needing a jolt of caffeine a few times a day to keep them awake.
The other thing about constant light is that it really throw your sense of timing across the day out of wack. I would wake up in the morning feeling as though it was 6am and it would be well past 11, or I would go out for a walk in the afternoon and when I got back it would be almost midnight. With the sun moving across the sky so slowly, and not much variation in the light levels almost every hour of the day felt the same, and I soon started to lose that reflex of having to do things before the sun goes down - because it never really does. For a while this meant that the days started to get a way from me, but it is hard not to do lots of things when the day is 20 hours long. Finns also know that the dreaded winter, with its almost light free days is on the ominous and unrelenting march towards them so they take full advantage of the light and spend a lot of time out doors. And I must say whilst I enjoyed the constant light I don't think I would be so keen on its constant absence.
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