The First Night You Don’t Sleep
It starts as a joke you make with yourself. ‘I’ll go to bed at midnight.’ Then midnight comes and the light through the curtains is the color of a late afternoon in September, and you think — maybe just one more hour. You pull on a jacket and walk outside, and the sun is right there, low and gold above the fjord, and some part of your brain just gives up on the concept of night altogether.
That’s the midnight sun in Northern Norway. Not a metaphor, not ‘really long days’ — actual, literal, continuous sunlight. Above the Arctic Circle from late May through late July, the sun does not set. It dips toward the northern horizon around midnight, hangs there in amber for a while, then starts climbing again. The peak window is June, when even the dimming is minimal and the light stays warm around the clock.
Tromsø After Hours
Tromsø is the obvious starting point, and for good reason. It’s the biggest city north of the Arctic Circle, which means you get the phenomenon without giving up restaurants, museums, or reliable Wi-Fi. The sun stays up from roughly May 20 to July 22. Flights connect through Oslo and Stockholm — nothing exotic about getting here, just a normal domestic connection.
The Sherpa Steps up Fløya (about 420 meters) are what everyone does, and honestly, they should be. The trail itself isn’t hard — steep in places, but manageable. What makes it worth the hike is standing at the top at midnight and seeing the city below, the islands around it, and the sun just sitting there above the northern sea. The light at that hour is warm and sideways in a way that makes everything look like a film still.
The Arctic Cathedral runs midnight sun concerts through the summer, which sounds gimmicky until you’re actually sitting there watching golden light pour through that enormous stained glass window while someone plays Grieg. It’s a small venue. Book ahead if you want a seat — they sell out, especially on weekends.
Midnight kayaking is the other classic. Several operators run trips through the fjords around 10 or 11pm. The water tends to be calmer at that hour, and the reflections off the mountains are genuinely absurd. I’d rate it somewhere between ‘very nice’ and ‘questioning whether I’m actually awake.’ Prices vary but expect around 800-1000 NOK per person. If you’re comparing tour operators, GetYourGuide lists several options with reviews, which saves some research time.
The Islands and the Edge
Lofoten
The Lofoten Islands look fake. That’s the simplest way to put it. Jagged peaks come straight up out of the sea, red fishing cabins (rorbuer) line the harbors, and the beaches have white sand that would look at home in the Caribbean except the water temperature is around 10°C and will remind you very quickly where you are.
Under the midnight sun, Lofoten’s light goes from good to genuinely extraordinary. Photographers lose their minds here because the golden hour — that low-angled warm light that normally lasts twenty minutes — goes on for hours. Reinebringen is the famous viewpoint hike, recently rebuilt with stone steps because the old trail was essentially a mud slide that got worse every year. The view from the top is the one you’ve seen in every Norway travel photo.
Rorbuer accommodation books up fast in summer. Really fast. If you’re going in June, start looking in February or March. You can check availability on Trip.com — the prices aren’t exactly cheap, but that’s Norway for you.
Nordkapp
Nordkapp (North Cape) at 71°N is the dramatic cliff that gets called ‘Europe’s northernmost point,’ which is technically debatable — Knivskjellodden, a few kilometers west, actually extends slightly further north, but Nordkapp has the globe monument and the visitor center and the marketing budget. Standing at the cliff edge at midnight watching the sun skim the Arctic Ocean horizon is undeniably striking regardless of geographic pedantry.
There’s a midnight sun marathon held here in June, if running 42 kilometers under perpetual daylight at the top of a continent sounds appealing. The base town is Honningsvåg, reachable by flights from Tromsø or by the Hurtigruten coastal ship.
Svalbard — If You Really Mean It
Svalbard at 78°N gets continuous sunlight from mid-April to late August — over four months. The main settlement, Longyearbyen, is closer to the North Pole than to Oslo. There are polar bears. There are glaciers. There’s a seed vault. It’s a strange, beautiful, slightly surreal place where you need a rifle escort outside town boundaries because of said bears.
Getting there requires a flight from Tromsø or Oslo. It’s not casual or cheap, but if the midnight sun in Tromsø feels insufficiently extreme, Svalbard exists.
What Nobody Warns You About
Sleep is a real problem. Not a cute ‘oh I stayed up late’ problem — an actual physiological issue. Your circadian rhythm needs darkness cues and there aren’t any. An eye mask isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s essential equipment. The good hotels have blackout curtains, but if you’re in a cabin or camping, you’re relying entirely on the mask. Some people bring melatonin for the first few nights. It helps.
You will get sunburned at 1am. The sun is low-angled but still putting out UV, and the reflection off water amplifies it. Putting on sunscreen before a midnight hike feels absurd, but the alternative is explaining your lobster face the next day.
It’s cold. People hear ‘24-hour sunshine’ and pack for summer. Tromsø in June averages 8-15°C. Svalbard is colder. The mountains are colder still. Layers are non-negotiable: base layer, wool or fleece mid, windproof and waterproof shell. Weather shifts fast up here — blue sky to rain in twenty minutes is normal.
Everything costs money. Norway is expensive by any standard, and summer is peak season. A basic meal in Tromsø runs 200-300 NOK. Beer is around 100 NOK. Accommodation can be steep. The one genuine budget hack: Norway’s allemannsretten (right to roam) means you can wild camp almost anywhere for free. Bring a tent and suddenly the cost drops significantly. Plus, setting up camp at midnight in full daylight is considerably easier than fumbling with tent poles in the dark.
Getting There and Getting Around
Tromsø Airport (TOS) has direct flights from Oslo, and seasonal connections from Stockholm and other Nordic cities. You can compare routes on KIWI.COM — the key is booking early, because summer flights to Northern Norway fill up.
Once you’re there, a rental car opens up everything. The drive from Tromsø to Lofoten is about five hours and passes through scenery that will make you stop every twenty minutes. The E10 across Lofoten itself is one of Europe’s great drives. Europcar has a desk at Tromsø Airport, which keeps things simple.
The other classic option is Hurtigruten, the coastal steamer that calls at 34 ports between Bergen and Kirkenes. The northbound summer voyage passes through the midnight sun zone, and watching the sun refuse to set while fjords slide past the deck railing is — well, it’s the kind of thing that’s hard to describe without sounding like a brochure, so I’ll just say it’s worth it and leave it at that. Book well in advance; summer sailings fill up months ahead.
For tours and experiences — whale watching, kayaking, guided hikes — you can browse options on KLOOK or GetYourGuide. Booking at least a week ahead is smart for popular June activities.
Losing Track
The strangest thing about the midnight sun isn’t the light itself. It’s what it does to your sense of time. You eat dinner at 10pm because you forgot it was 10pm. You start a hike at 11pm because the sun is out and why not. You wake up in your hotel room with no idea whether it’s 6am or 6pm until you check your phone.
After a few days you stop fighting it and just let the schedule dissolve. Norwegians seem to already know this — they spend their summers outdoors with an intensity that makes sense once you understand they’re storing up light against the polar night coming in December. The fishing rods come out. The boats go in the water. The hiking trails are busy at hours that would be sleeping hours anywhere else.
I came back with about two hundred photos, most of them slightly overexposed. My sleep schedule took a week to recover. The tan lines from my watch strap lasted a month.
