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W I N T E R I S S U E 3 0
The yellow sun dips towards the horizon,
casting pinks and blues through the clouds,
the colours reflecting on the lazy sea below.
A crowd is gathering quietly, photographing
what could, on any other day, be an arresting
sunrise or sunset. We stand on the ship's
deck, awestruck as the golden orb caresses
the skyline, making as if to fall beneath it. But
it stays there, and will begin to rise again. We
are watching the midnight sun.
In Norway, between May and July, the sun
doesn't set in the northernmost parts of the
country. If you cross the Arctic Circle as we
have done, the rules of the world, the way
the universe aligns to give us day and night,
don't apply. This is what it's like on top of
the world.
INTO THE ARCTIC
"What do you think of this one?" I ask my
sister, Maddie, who has her arms filled with
skeins of knitting yarn. I am modelling a
cardigan with an intricate Scandinavian
pattern in oatmeal and brown.
"That's a good one," she says, nodding. I
agree. It's $600 but I buy it, desperate to take
Norway home with me. Maddie purchases her
Norwegian wool, enough to fill half a suitcase.
For an enthusiast knitter like her, Norway, with
its cold climate and sheep farming, is the holy
grail of yarn.
We walk out of the knitting store in Tromsø,
one of the world's northernmost cities. If we
were here in winter, we would be plunged
into darkness now, feet sinking in thick snow,
hoping for a glimpse of the northern lights.
But summer has its own majesty, the storied
"polar day", and we are on a pilgrimage up
the Norwegian coast, on Viking Jupiter's Into
The Midnight Sun voyage, to find it.
Looking out at the Tromsø port, the Arctic
Cathedral sits in pride of place between
majestic mountains capped with snow.
Seagulls own the foreshore, fighting over food
and nesting spots, and restaurants spruik
whale steak, moose burgers and reindeer
salami. Our tour guide, Viktor, came to Tromsø
to photograph the aurora borealis and was so
enchanted he never left. During "polar night",
he explains, when the sun disappears for six
weeks in winter, it's not pitch black but a kind
