So I could see the Midnight Sun, I went out on deck for the beginning of Sunday, June 28. From my cabin window just before twelve O’clock, I saw that the rocky cliffs were sunlit all the way to the water; so I hurried out on deck to see the sun. I had seen the light from the sun at midnight the day before, but I couldn’t see the sun itself because the ship was deep in Troll Fjord. I was expecting to see the great golden ball hugging the horizon, but the sun was actually well above the edge of ocean into which it will not sink into for another month and a half.
Looking out on the bright, cold midnight seascape and landscape of Northern Norway, I wondered what total environment, including where the sun and moon are relative to an individual’s place on earth, determines one’s sense self. If I had lived my life in a tidy little blue house on the edge of a cliff overlooking a deep fjord being warmed almost never by the sun, would I be the same self that I am having lived my life in places alternately warm and cool, dark and light? How would I think about the people living in the red house down the road, the only house and only neighbors for many miles?
So I could see the Midnight Sun, I went out on deck for the beginning of Sunday, June 28. From my cabin window just before twelve O’clock, I saw that the rocky cliffs were sunlit all the way to the water; so I hurried out on deck to see the sun. I had seen the light from the sun at midnight the day before, but I couldn’t see the sun itself because the ship was deep in Troll Fjord. I was expecting to see the great golden ball hugging the horizon, but the sun was actually well above the edge of ocean into which it will not sink into for another month and a half.
Looking out on the bright, cold midnight seascape and landscape of Northern Norway, I wondered what total environment, including where the sun and moon are relative to an individual’s place on earth, determines one’s sense self. If I had lived my life in a tidy little blue house on the edge of a cliff overlooking a deep fjord being warmed almost never by the sun, would I be the same self that I am having lived my life in places alternately warm and cool, dark and light? How would I think about the people living in the red house down the road, the only house and only neighbors for many miles? 
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