About noon, one day late in January, a group of school children dressed
in warm coats, caps, and mittens stood in the snow eagerly waiting for
something. Suddenly one of the big boys pulled a rope that sent the flag
to the top of its pole. There it waved a greeting as over the edge of
the earth peeped the sun!
While the children watched, the rim of gold became half a round ball.
Then it began to drop and in an hour no part of that ball could be seen
in the sky.
Those children live in a town near the top of the world. Weeks and weeks
had passed since they had seen the sun. About the time that American
children were having Thanksgiving the sun had dropped from sight. There
was no sunshine in that northern town on Christmas day. The children
went to school through cold dark streets lighted by electricity. Then
came days when there was a pale light in the sky, like the dawn that
comes just before the sun rises. At last came that day in January when
the sun appeared. No wonder the flag was raised to greet him!
As those children greeted the big shining ball they knew that now they
would see the sun in the sky for months. Each day it would stay a little
longer.
Time went on. One day about the middle of May the children saw the sun
in the east early in the morning not to set again for weeks and weeks.
Each day it seemed to move around the sky in a big circle near the
ground. To girls and boys who live in the far north of Norway and Sweden
the sun seems to go _around_ their homes, not _over_ them from east to
west as we see it. The picture of the midnight sun shows just how the
sun seems to move around low in the sky. Of course, as you know, the
earth is really moving around the sun.
For many weeks the children had sunshine while they worked and while
they played. No longer did they have to work in their schoolrooms by
electric light. They ate their breakfasts, dinners, and suppers while
the sun shone. They even had sunshine while they slept, sunshine all
through the night. The sun did not set again until late in July. And in
July the sun was gone from the sky only a few hours each night.
[Illustration: THIS PICTURE SHOWS HOW THE SUN SEEMS TO MOVE AROUND THE
HORIZON
An exposure was made every 20 minutes without
changing the position of the camera.]
Day after day the sun was gone for a little longer time until one day in
November it set again not to return until the next January.
Hammerfest, the town in which those children live, is in Norway. It is
farther north than any other town in the world. It is a small town with
only about six hundred homes.
The homes in Hammerfest are built of wood. Many of them are not painted
and the wood has turned dark brown from the weather. Other homes are
painted white, light green, pink, and blue. These colored houses are
pretty with their roofs of red tile.
The streets are narrow and look very bare without trees, and few trees
can grow in the cold of the far north. Hammerfest has a park with a
half-dozen or more trees and just outside the town stands a lone
tree—the most northern tree in the world. The school children are proud
of those few trees even though they are no larger than shrubs. They
point them out to the visitors who come to their town.
[Illustration: THIS TREE IS FARTHER NORTH THAN ANY OTHER TREE IN THE
WORLD]
Hammerfest faces the sea. The girls and boys of Hammerfest hurry to meet
the ships that stop on their shores. They look to see what flag each
ship flies. When they see the flag of a ship they are sure to know from
what country it comes. They see ships with Swedish flags, ships with
Danish flags, ships with Dutch flags, ships with English flags, ships
with American flags, and many other ships with other flags. The boys
like to watch ships unload coal, machinery, grain, and foodstuffs; and
to watch other ships being loaded with fish, cod-liver oil, and hides.
[Illustration: THE NORTH CAPE AND THE MIDNIGHT SUN]
Both the boys and the girls like to go aboard the passenger ships that
visit their port. Sometimes they try to talk to the passengers. They
hear many strange languages—English, Dutch, French, German, and
Italian. They see people from many different countries—England,
Scotland, America, Holland, France, Germany, and Italy. People from
almost all over the world stop at Hammerfest on the large steamers which
carry them to the very top of Norway to a big rock that sticks out into
the Arctic Ocean. That rock called the North Cape is less than one
hundred miles from Hammerfest. Many, many people visit the North Cape
each summer at the time when the sun shines there at midnight.
During the summer the girls and boys play along the shores of the Arctic
Ocean. Often they find wood that has been carried in by the waves. We
call such wood driftwood. When the cool evenings come driftwood is fine
for burning in open fireplaces. One day some of the boys found pieces of
strange wood and bark. An old sailor told them that those pieces were
from the great palm trees which grow far to the south where the sun
shines all the year round. It had been carried to them by the warm
stream of water which also keeps their shores from freezing even in the
cold winters.
Visitors who walk along the streets of that town far to the north get a
strong smell of cod-liver oil. Hammerfest has a big factory where men
make cod-liver oil. They take the livers from codfish and press them to
get the oil. Then they put the oil in large barrels ready for ships to
carry it away to other parts of Norway and to countries far away. Many
girls and boys in America have tasted cod-liver oil from Hammerfest, as
much of it is sold in our country.
Many of the children of Hammerfest have never seen a street-car nor a
train. But they have electric lights in their homes and on their
streets. Their town is too small to need street-cars and, because of the
mountains and the great distances between the towns, no railroads have
been built in that land so far north. But those children get their mail
and packages from boats. They travel by boats too. Their boats come all
the year round as regularly as trains in towns on the railroads.
Perhaps some children will think, “But surely ships cannot visit those
northern shores in the winter when the sun is gone from the sky. The
waters must be frozen.” But they are wrong about the northern lands near
the sea. Ships come and go all the year round. Those waters are never
frozen.
Those northern shores are warmed in a strange way. South of the United
States of America is a body of water called the Gulf of Mexico. That
body of water lies at a place on the earth where it gets warm sunshine
all the year round. The water is always very warm. It is that warm water
which keeps the land near the top of the earth warm.
The Gulf of Mexico seems to act in a way similar to a tank in the
basement of a large house which sends water to heat the rooms far from
the basement. A stream of warm water from that warm gulf is carried
thousands of miles across the ocean to the shores of this northland.
This is called the Gulf Stream. And the Gulf Stream keeps those shores
warm enough for people to live there comfortably even during the months
when no sun shines.
Some people who have traveled in many parts of the world have visited
this town farther north than any other town in the world. Some of them
say, “Hammerfest is not only the town which lies farthest north; it is
also unlike any other town in the world.” And perhaps that is what the
readers of this book are thinking too.