The Magic of Arctic Light and Polar Nights

Everyone talks about the Northern Lights, but I want to talk about something I find even more beautiful – the subtle magic of Arctic light.

What do I mean by Arctic light?

In simple terms, Arctic light is the unique quality of natural light found in polar regions, especially during the long transitions between day and night near the Arctic Circle. But in truth, it’s much more poetic than that.

Here’s what makes it special:

• 🌅 The Low Sun:
  In the Arctic, the sun never climbs high in the sky. Even at midday, it hovers low on the horizon. This means the light is soft, golden, and stretched, casting impossibly long shadows that can make even the most ordinary landscape feel cinematic. It’s my favourite type of light to experience.
• 🌞 The Midnight Sun (Summer):
  In summer, above the Arctic Circle, the sun doesn’t set at all for weeks or even months. The result? An eerie, dreamlike glow. It’s like the world is bathed in permanent twilight, with colours that shift from gold to rose to silver-blue. You can walk at midnight and feel like it’s both dawn and dusk at the same time. I love how long the days last during the summer. It’s my favourite type to travel within the Arctic.
• 🌌 The Polar Night (Winter):
  In winter, the opposite happens – the sun doesn’t rise for weeks. Yet it’s not total darkness. Around midday, there’s a faint blue or violet light that lingers just above the horizon, called the blue hour. It’s cold, quiet, and hauntingly beautiful – the Arctic lit from memory rather than sunlight.
• 🎨 The Optical Magic:
  Ice, snow, and low humidity act like natural filters, scattering sunlight in unique ways. The colours in the Arctic sky can be more vivid, the contrast sharper. Sometimes it feels like the entire atmosphere has turned into a painter’s canvas.

So, Arctic light isn’t one kind of light. It’s a shifting spectrum that defines life at the top of the world. It shapes everything: how people sleep, how they socialise, how they tell stories, and how they cope and adapt.

My experience of the Polar night season

Polar nights are kind of strange and surreal. On one hand, it’s a novel experience if you don’t live above the Arctic Circle and have never experienced them before. On the other hand, you have to fight against your body’s natural urge to sleep.

During my first trip to the Arctic during winter I found the minimal daylight hours quite jarring. As soon as the last whisper of light fizzled away by 2.30pm I debated whether or not I should get into my pyjamas!

A part of me also felt frustrated at not being able to see and do more. The Norwegian Arctic isn’t a landscape you want to miss, so it’s easy getting into a hapless race with the fast-approaching night. Frustratingly, it always wins.

During this time the sun never passes the horizon. The further north you get the longer Polar night lasts. In the Lofoten Islands the period lasts around four weeks. Comparatively this is short as a little bit further north in Tromso the sun doesn’t rise for six weeks, and in Alta the wait is closer to eight weeks. At the highest point in Svalbard, perpetual darkness reigns for nearly four months.

It’s difficult to imagine not seeing the sun for so many weeks, and I suspect, even more difficult trying to brush away the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder.

However, even though the sun never passes the horizon it’s not all doom and gloom. Something very special takes place. Between the hours of approximately 11am – 2pm there’s a low sun – my favourite type of arctic light.

The low sun

This is when the sun, although below the horizon, gives enough light to transform the sky into one incredibly long sunset.

Ray Lucas, an astronomer, adds more information:

“In the Northern Hemisphere winter season, the diffuse glow of the sunlight from the sun below the horizon when viewed from north of the Arctic Circle will be centered on and extending up from the south. Whereas the similar phenomenon with the summer Midnight Sun seen from just south of the Arctic Circle will show the extended glow of the briefly-setting sun centered in the north instead of the south (and the same works in the reverse directions in the southern polar region). It is all due to geometry and astronomical reasons.

The tilt of the Earth on its axis means that, in its annual trip around the sun, Earth’s North Pole is pointed towards the sun in the Northern Hemisphere summer, and pointed away from the sun in the Northern Hemisphere winter, when the Earth is on the opposite side of the sun from where it was 6 months earlier. Ironically, the Earth is closer to the sun in Northern Hemisphere winter and farther from it in Northern Hemisphere summer since the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is not exactly circular, but rather elliptical. And it is the long Midnight Sun days of constant illumination of the sun rather than the relative distance from the sun that makes the most difference in warmth and growing season, etc. for the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. It works the same way in the Southern Hemisphere and Antarctica, of course, except the seasons are exactly opposite.”

Kaamos – the blue tinge

However, the daylight doesn’t always look so light  or dramatic, there are times when it can remain dark (in Svalbard for example) or with a blue tinge known as ‘kaamos’ in Finnish.

Three hours of light is incredibly short, by any standards, but if you alter your perception of the light and treat it by what it looks like for the greater part – a sunset – then it feels longer.

Hues of pink slowly stretch into fuchsia then violet; and red clouds expand into a blaze of orange. During this time, the Polar Night could easily be mistaken for the Midnight Sun.

Witnessing this truly does make you in awe of Mother Nature’s breathtaking palette of colours.

Have you experienced the beauty of Arctic light?