The Norwegian island of Sommaroy in West Tromso, north of the Arctic Circle has a peculiar celestial phenomenon. The island experiences complete sunshine of 69 days straight in a year with no sunsets at all. The population of 300 people residing on the island work, play, eat and sleep at any given time of the day they want.
They are however bounded with the Greenwich Mean Time zone for their business and official work. But as the citizens of the island do not experience time like the majority of the rest of the world, they have decided to get to rid of the time zone.
As a result, they have initiated a Time-Free Zone campaign, to make Sommaroy free of time! Kjell Ove Hveding, leader of the campaign, said the aim is to provide flexibility so that citizens of the island can ‘do what they want, when they want.’
Accordingly, on 13 June, members of the town’s council spoke to a Norwegian minister in a meeting and discussed how they could become officially ‘time-free’.
“In many cases, this can be linked to the feeling of being trapped, and here the clock plays a role. We will be a time-free zone where everyone can live their lives to the fullest,” he told to a Norwegian daily reports The Independent.
“Children and young people still have to go to school, but there is room for flexibility. One does not need to be put into a box in the form of school or working hours,” he said.
“Our goal is to provide full flexibility, 24/7. If you want to cut the lawn at 4am, then you do it. There’s constant daylight, and we act accordingly. In the middle of the night, which city folk might call ‘2 am’, you can spot children playing soccer, people painting their houses or mowing their lawns, and teens going for a swim,” he added.
The continues sunlight makes it difficult for the locals to differentiate between day and night. Hence, they have appealed to make their island a time-free zone.
We wonder how strange it would be to live in a place where the sun doesn’t set for so many days! Anyways, we hope their demand for becoming a time-free zone materializes soon!