The Murky Time

By air, the Norwegian cities of Oslo and Tromso/ are only 650 miles and 100 minutes apart. The psychological distance, however, is much greater, for Tromso/ lies 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and its 40,000 inhabitants live two months of each year without seeing the sun. In this polar blackness or mo/rketiden* (murky time), the mentally unstable may slip over the edge into a temporary state of profound mental disturbance. Even those who are emotionally healthy the rest of the year may become unaccountably tense, restless, fearful and preoccupied with thoughts of death and suicide.

From Nov. 25 to Jan. 21, the sun does not rise above the horizon in Tromso/ or in the rest of Norway's far north, leaving the region in darkness except for an hour of gloomy twilight at noon. TIME's Oslo correspondent, Dag Christensen, describes the scene at midday: "As the jet speeds northward, you see the moon shining brighter every minute. You glimpse small, isolated settlements, clusters of fishermen's houses along the rugged coast, and little farms at the foot of the towering mountains. As you approach Tromso/ the faint, fading twilight turns lakes and fjords, islands, snow-capped mountains and the sky itself into a fantasy world of blue, gray and white."

The beauty of mo/rketiden soon pales. Especially in the more isolated parts of the north, says Tromso/ Sound County Sheriff Knut Kruse, "people seem to be different during winter. They become edgy, complaining, sour. They long for the light, talk about the darkness, condemn it. They display much more of a 'couldn't care less' attitude." In Tromso/, reports Psychiatrist Harald Reppesgaard of Asgard Mental Hospital, "the whole city slows down. People's concentration and work capacity are reduced, and they are always tired." Adds R. Kaare Rodahl, an Oslo physiologist who has done research in the Arctic: "The polar night has a tendency to bring out the least desirable elements in human behavior--envy, jealousy, suspicion, egotism, irritability."

Lack of sleep seems to cause much of the trouble. Explains Sheriff Kruse: "I get confused by the dark. I wake up and wonder whether it is time to go to work or whether I can go on sleeping. During mo/rketiden, I am dependent on my watch; the clock of nature is not working right." One youth became so deranged after four days of sleeplessness that he had to be admitted to Asgard Mental Hospital. There he could barely speak, shivered with apprehension, recognized no one and believed he had been poisoned--yet woke up recovered after a long, drug-induced sleep.

Sale of sleeping pills, pep pills and tranquilizers rises sharply during mo/frketiden, and Tromso/ has a higher incidence of hard-drug use than any other Norwegian city except Oslo. Illness, most of it psychosomatic, increases, and accidents multiply. In remote areas, young men sometimes adopt a tough-guy, risk-defying attitude. A young construction worker, for instance, may take off in his snowmobile in his shirtsleeves--and freeze to death when the motor stalls in the middle of nowhere.

Neon Daylight. The psychological impact of the murky time depends on individual temperament. Explains Kaare Torp, the pediatrics chief of Tromso/'s Central Hospital: "If a person doesn't use mo/rketiden as an excuse for job failure, marital problems or just feeling low, if he takes it as a challenge, if he doesn't sit back and give in to the darkness, he will pull through." The most prevalent way of rising to the challenge is to turn on all the lights; electricity is cheap in Norway. Neon daylight tubes are often installed over living-room windows, lamps are hung in gardens and on gates, and street lights burn 24 hours a day. Floodlights illuminate the much-used swimming pools, ski trails and skating rinks.

"No one wants to be alone," observes SAS District Sales Manager Arne Karlsen. Tromso/ restaurants, especially the four that have dance bands, are filled every night with fashionably dressed diners, and people sometimes drive a hundred miles and back in a single evening to visit friends or go to a concert. A favorite pastime is planning vacations in sunny climates--or even taking them during mo/rketiden, a practice that firms are beginning to encourage to help their employees get through the hardest time of the year.

The long darkness may well have made northern Norwegians more tolerant and forgiving than most people. In the north, says Dr. Karl Hartviksen, chief psychiatrist at Oslo's Gaustad Hospital, "people know that man cannot rule nature, so they don't expect him to be able to rule his own nature, which is even more formidable."

The people of the north count the days until the sun's reappearance on Soldag (sun day). They plan sun feasts to celebrate, look forward to the closing of schools and offices, and on the great day go to a favorite outdoor spot to watch the sun rise over the horizon. As it makes its appearance, they laugh and clap each other on the back, and some of them shout, "There she is! She's back! She's back!"

* Pronounced mur-ka-tee-den.

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