Key takeaways
- More than nineteen hours of daylight in June, and a long dusk after it that never quite becomes proper darkness.
- Under five hours in December. The sun clears the horizon late, stays low all day and is gone by mid-afternoon.
- Alesund sits below the Arctic Circle, so the sun does set. What you get instead is a night that stays light.
- Not the longest days. Late August and September, when the sun is lower, give the best light on water and rock.
What sixty-two degrees north does to a day
Alesund sits at roughly sixty-two degrees north, which is further north than Anchorage and level with the middle of Iceland. At that latitude the length of the day is not a detail, it is the largest single difference between one month here and another.
The swing is from more than nineteen hours of daylight in June to under five in December. That is a four-fold change across the year, and it changes what a boat trip is: in June an evening departure is a daylight trip, and in December the entire operating window is a single long afternoon.
Midsummer, and why it is not midnight sun
The midnight sun requires the Arctic Circle, at roughly sixty-six and a half degrees north. Alesund is a few hundred kilometres short of that, so the sun does dip below the horizon here in June. What it does not do is go far below it.
The result is a long civil twilight that runs through the small hours: the sky stays light, you can read outside at midnight, and it never becomes properly dark. For most visitors this is more interesting than actual midnight sun, because the light is soft and coloured for hours rather than simply present.
On the water it means an evening trip in June is not a compromise. The fjord walls are lit, the light is warm rather than harsh, and the town is quieter than it is at midday.
Low northern sun on the water, which is what the shoulder months give you
The December floor
In December there are fewer than five hours between sunrise and sunset, and the sun never gets high. It rises late in the morning, tracks along close to the southern horizon, and is gone in the middle of the afternoon.
Combined with the weather, that is a short and unreliable operating window. It is also, on a clear day, a remarkable one: a sun that stays low all day produces hours of the kind of light that other latitudes get for twenty minutes.
It is also the time of year when the difference between a clear day and an overcast one is starkest. With so little light to work with, cloud takes away most of what there is, and a grey December afternoon on the water is genuinely dim rather than merely dull.
The months in between
The change is fastest around the equinoxes. Between February and April daylight climbs from around eight hours to more than fourteen, gaining several minutes a day, and the reverse happens between September and November. Anyone visiting twice a few weeks apart in spring notices the difference immediately.
May and August are the balanced months, with seventeen and nearly sixteen hours respectively. There is enough light to do anything at any hour, and the sun is low enough at each end of the day to be worth photographing.
For a visitor this matters most when planning more than one thing in a day. In March there is time for a boat trip and something else afterwards; in November there is time for one, and only if it starts early.
19 h
More than nineteen hours of daylight in June against under five in December, a four-fold swing across the year.
When the light is actually best
The longest day and the best light are not the same thing, and this is where midsummer is slightly oversold. In June the sun is high for most of the day, which is flat, hard light on rock and water. It is bright, and it is not flattering.
Late August and September are the answer. The days are still long enough to be useful, the sun tracks lower, and the low angle gives texture to a fjord wall and colour to water that midsummer washes out. September also brings the settled conditions that let a small boat sit still.
The same is true at the other end of the year. April and early May, with snow still lying on the peaks and the sun at a workable angle rather than straight overhead, produce pictures that high midsummer simply cannot, and the fjord walls hold shadow instead of glare.
What this means for booking a time
In midsummer the departure time barely matters for light, so choose on wind and on how busy the harbour is. A late departure in June is often the calmest and quietest of the day, and it is still fully lit.
In spring and autumn, timing matters a great deal. The last trip of the day is the one worth taking if you care about how the fjord looks, and the middle of the day is the one to take if you care about warmth.
In winter, take whatever is running. The window is short, the weather has the final say, and a clear December afternoon on this coast is worth rearranging a day for.
The practical side of long light
Long days change the shape of a trip in ways people do not anticipate. In June you can take a boat at eight in the evening and still eat dinner in daylight afterwards, which makes a short trip easy to fit around everything else.
It also affects sleep, and every hotel room in this part of Norway has heavy curtains for a reason. If you are sensitive to light, bring an eye mask in June and thank yourself at three in the morning when it is bright outside.
