“THE TIME IS OUT OF JOINT”... Was it Macduff’s or some other of Shakespeare’s character’s observation when familiar elements of the environment seem out of place? On the first of July inside the Arctic Circle, the sun at midnight seems out of joint. Actually, which is Shakespeare’s point I guess, it is I who am out of joint. To the hardy people whom I saw in Hardstad this morning, the endless day is as natural as breathing and during almost two months of constant daylight they seem to store up reserve light as a battery stores energy for that time which comes too soon when there is endless night. These are not a morose people. They laugh and sing and tell good stories... in several languages.

Today we have light rain... drizzle. We will go back into Troll Fjord this afternoon, and the ship will do the turn-around in a very small space. Most of the people on board are German or Norwegian. Among the Norwegians I have noticed a slight preference for Americans over Germans. The Nazis were especially hard on this country, especially at the end of World War II. It surprises me that they tended to level whole towns as they left them in 1945. They had to know the war was lost for Germany, yet they continued to inflict cruel hurt. It is the nature of war: Identify the enemy and do as much damage as possible, even in retreat. On a smaller scale it seems to be the same. After a domestic war that ends in divorce, couples sometimes continue to inflict hurt on each other. Two people who have once been friends but have become enemies tend to hurt each other more than they do the people with whom they are not even acquainted. Thank goodness it is also in our nature finally to “get over it.” I am personally working on “getting over it” as I think back over the damage done to our country and to our people and to the world by an inept president. I was out traveling in the world during the eight years of the second Bush presidency, and I watched as America’s image became more and more tarnished. Now in this first year of President Obama’s administration, people who are not Americans are looking on us more kindly and with hope that we may help solve the world’s problems rather than make them worse.We were in Troll Fjord at midnight on our way north. Now we are heading south again, and the ship is going into the fjord where it will turn around and head back out again. We are here earlier in the day this time, and we have an overcast sky and drizzle. NORWAY has become one of the richest countries in the world. According to the Norwegian telling us about the country, it is now the third richest country in the world. Beautiful, expensive bridges (not toll bridges) connect islands scattered along the west coast of the country.