Longest Day of the Year
June 20, is the summer solstice! This is one of two days during the year when the Earth is at its greatest tilt. Can you guess when the other solstice is? It's December 21 or so, six months from now! When you look at a globe, it is always shown at a tilt, leaning a little to one side. The Earth very slowly changes its tilt from one hemisphere to the other, northern tilted toward the sun and then southern tilted toward the sun. That takes six months. What that means here inside the Arctic circle is that the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, so we have daylight for all 24 hours at this time of year. In fact, the definition of the Arctic Circle is the region near the North Pole where summer brings daylight all the time. Today GPS is confused and shows sunset before sunrise! The Antarctic Circle has 24 hours of darkness at this time. In December these will be reversed, and it will be dark all the time here in Kanger.
Today there is also a full moon; the last time there was a full moon on the summer solstice was 1967! It's a funny feeling to go to bed and sleep while it is light outside the tent all night long! It does get colder at night, but there is still light. I've been sleeping with an eye mask, so I sleep with darkened eyes.
The cook tent in daylight at 11:00 p.m.
Greenland National Day
Greenland Day is my third national holiday on this trip; I was in Denmark and Sweden for the national day of each of those countries too! Greenland's National Day was established in 1983. It is an annual folk festival on June 21, which is the summer solstice in most years. The science station director told me that it is not a very big event here in Kanger because the town here is not the native home of anyone. The town was established around the U.S. air base that used to be here, and now it exists for transportation (the airport) and science reasons. Since it's not really a hometown, most people don't live here for too many years before they move somewhere else, so the celebration here is not a family day. We are looking forward to sampling reindeer sausage and musk ox burgers!
Flag of the Day
Alexa's reindeer flag.
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