Visit to Norway Helen Goldrein I’ve long held the opinion that if you’re going to go on holiday in the winter, it might as well be a proper winter holiday. Not for me sunsoaked beaches and balmy evenings. I want snow, roaring log fires, and maybe a cup or two of something hot and reviving. So people who know me were not too surprised when we chose to take our family holiday in Tromsø, Northern Norway, last December. Located about 350km north of the Arctic Circle, Tromsø is plunged into the darkness of the polar night from around the end of November until mid-January. The sun did not rise above the horizon for the duration of our trip. It was only once we had arrived in town that we realised the implications of this for the timing of the start of Shabbat, lighting our Chanukah candles, and so on! Fortunately, despite being in the wilderness of the frozen north, we had good internet access, and naturally we weren’t the first people to come up against this problem. It seems there are two alternative solutions that are widely accepted. The first is to use the time from the nearest town where the sun does rise and set. The second, useful only to visitors, is to continue using the time from your place of origin. This of course does mean that multiple visitors from different cities might all light their Shabbat candles at different times. However, it wasn’t a problem for us as we had all travelled together from Cambridge. The polar darkness was not quite as dark as I had anticipated. The ambient light level varies from night, through ‘astronomical twilight’ (almost indistinguishable from night), and dimly-lit ‘nautical twilight’ to ‘civil twilight’, which is roughly as bright as an overcast day. Page 11
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