Where the Sun Shines All Night

IN “Through the Looking-Glass” the story of “The Walrus and the Carpenter” starts this way:

The sun was shining on the sea,Shining with all his might: …And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night.

Sun shining at midnight! You probably think this can’t be true and is only a joke, but it is true up at the top of Norway and Sweden. At the top of Norway is a great rock sticking out into the Arctic Ocean. It is called the North Cape, and although there is no town there, people make long journeys from other lands to the North Cape to see the sun shining on the sea in the middle of the night.

You have always been told that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and probably you have never seen it do anything else; but the boys and girls in the north of Norway and Sweden know differently, for up there the sun doesn’t rise in the east and set in the west. It goes completely round the house low down in the sky near the ground and keeps on going round and round this way every day for six months and in that time never sets—is never out of sight—there is always daylight for six months. But the sun gradually gets closer and closer to the ground as it goes round the sky and then at last sinks out of sight below the edge of the World, and there it stays out of sight for another six months and for six months it is night.

How can such a thing be? Isn’t it the same sun we see here?

Yes, of course it’s the same sun; there’s only one sun. But we are living on the side of the World and we can’t see the sun when it goes round to the other side of the World. If, however, we climb up the side of the World to the top where the North Cape is, we can see the sun go all the way round. It is as if you lived on the side of a hill and some one went round the hill and came back on the other side. You could see him go off one way and come back the other way, but you couldn’t see him when he was on the other side. If, however, you went to the top of the hill you could see him all the way round.