What’s it like to experience the land of the midnight sun?

I’m lying on my back under an azure sky in a rooftop pool with the sun warming my body and glistening on the water. It’s the stuff of dreams; and this is certainly the moment for them, because right now it’s midnight. I am in the land where, for four months of the year, the sun never sets.

It’s a strange feeling, this round-the-clock daylight. Going to bed in the small hours means closing the curtains on what looks like the mid-afternoon; it feels like nap time, but actually it’s the middle of the night and a full seven hours is what I was hoping for. However, I shouldn’t stress too much if I can’t sleep, a fellow swimmer at the pool tells me, ‘In this part of Norway, we go with nature’s flow. We don’t sleep so much in the summer, but we balance it with a lot of sleep during the winter.’

Here in the Arctic Circle, that mystical space above the planet’s 66-degree latitude line, things are different. From late April to the end of August (I’m here in June), the sun is always above the horizon; but equally magical are the weeks between mid-November and mid-January, when the sun never rises. That’s the perfect time to witness one of the most stunning visual treats on earth, the aurelia borealis, or Northern Lights, caused when storms on the sun’s surface throw out clouds of electrically charged particles, which when they collide with the earth’s atmosphere result in spectacular displays of swirling, dancing greens and pinks and purples across the night sky. The northern lights can be visible any time between September to March, and recently there have been amazing displays even in the UK: but the finest shows of all are in the Arctic Circle, and meteorologists predict the lights of 2025 will be the most breathtaking in over a decade.

Only 9% of Norway’s population live in the Arctic: even in the summer the area never feels crowded. I’m based in the coastal city of Bodø and when I go on a two-hour walk up a mountain above, along footpaths lined with glorious wildflowers, I only pass one other hiker. From the top, I have a magnificent view of the Lofoten Islands, 98 miles across the sea. You’ve probably never been to the Lofoten Islands and you may never have even heard of them, but if you’ve been to Venice, you’ve almost certainly tasted the islands’ finest export – air-dried cod, known as baccalà, which is synonymous with the floating Italian city. That’s because in 1431, a Venetian merchant called Pietro Querini set out by sea to Flanders – and thanks to a series of storms, he ended up more than 1,000 miles off course, on the Lofoten Islands.

Querini and his crew stayed for several months in the Lofoten capital Røst; and when he eventually returned to Italy, he took with him the local dish – fish that had been dried on huge frames. Today, you’ll find baccalà on the menu in restaurants across Venice; while across northern Norway you’ll see the huge frames used to dry the fish, since the drying process is still almost identical to how it was in Querini’s day. And like Champagne and Camembert, baccalà is a protected EU brand – if you’re eating it in Venice, it comes from northern Norway.

Arctic Cathedral, Tromsø

It helps to be a fish foodie if you’re visiting Norway: the icy waters of the Atlantic make for one of the richest marine environments on earth, as you’ll taste not only in the cod, but also halibut, coley and sea bream. Salmon is another of Norway’s biggest exports: they even have their own version of gravlax, the raw dish that requires an especially fine cut of salmon. Seafood too is superlative: try barbequed prawns if you’re there in summer, and plump mussels in autumn or winter.

You could easily eat fish all the way in Norway, but this is a meaty country too: in the summer, there’s plenty of beef, pork and lamb on the barbeques. Also featured on many menus – a surprise to some British visitors - is reindeer. To me it seemed tough – but like the UK version, venison, it’s all a question of how it’s been cooked. Another time, I’d try a reindeer stew or chilli, rather than a steak.

Norway has never been a cheap destination, but over the last decade the krone has weakened in value, which means a UK’s purchasing power is up by between a quarter and a third. For me, prices in Norway seemed similar to the UK – a decent hotel room is between £120-150 a night. My rooftop swim at a hotel where guests and non-residents were welcome cost me around £20 – I’d happily have paid twice that, which meant I didn’t begrudge £14 on a glass of fizz afterwards.

Top image credit: AWLimages.com

Experience the land of the midnight sun with an escorted tour of Norway, including The Best of Norway by Rail and Sea to the Top of the World and Captivating Norway