Living in the Arctic

(Include as time and interest indicate.)

You might wonder how it is possible to sleep in the two and a half months of daylight. One can easily become adapted to sleep when the Sun is shining. It is the darkest time of the year when sleeping habits are disturbed. For about three to four weeks there is no bright daylight. It is more like a twilight in the middle of the day. But the mechanism of sleeping, the hormones that cause sleep, are triggered by the bright daylight we get early in the day and not by the dark hours of the night. So, in the north where there is no Sun for two months, and really no daylight for three to four weeks, the body does not know when to sleep and when to be awake. 

Climate in the north varies from place to place. Tromsø, for instance, is as far north as the northernmost parts of Alaska, yet the winters in Tromsø are warmer than those in much of the United States. This is because of the Gulf Stream, a strong ocean current that carries warm water from the Gulf of Mexico, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the coast of Norway. The lowest temperature ever measured in Tromsø was 5°F. Northerners need not always be covered with fur.