'It was a fun idea': The Norwegian island that wanted to abolish time

Seven years after a bizarre plan to abolish time made headlines, what is life really like on this remote Arctic island?

In 2019, a tiny island community in the Norwegian Arctic made headlines around the world with an extraordinary proposal: it wanted to abolish time.

Residents of Sommarøy, a fishing village 56km west of Tromsø, were supposedly campaigning to become the world's first time-free zone during the 69 days each summer when the Sun never sets. Watches were hung from a nearby bridge and a local hotel owner presented a petition bearing residents' signatures to a member of Norway's parliament. The international media enthusiastically embraced the idea, lauding the town's efforts to live without reference to time.

There was just one problem: the campaign wasn't quite what it seemed.

Many locals were mystified by all the fuss, baffled by the idea that anyone could live entirely beyond time. How could a hotel operate without check-in or check-out times? Was a cafe supposed to remain open forever in case someone wanted lunch at 04:00? What about children attending school?

It turned out that Innovation Norway, the government agency for promoting tourism, had orchestrated the campaign. Although some islanders had participated, others were reportedly unaware of it. When the agency's involvement emerged, its head was forced to issue a public apology. The watches soon disappeared from the bridge, and the campaign sank, seemingly without a trace.

And yet, if you take away the cynicism of a government trying to manufacture a popular movement to attract visitors, there is something appealing about the idea.

High above the Arctic Circle, Sommarøy experiences uninterrupted daylight each summer from 18 May to 26 July, when the Sun never sets and the usual boundaries between day and night start to dissolve. In deep winter, the Sun never rises and lunch can be eaten in deep darkness. Could a place like this really change the way people experience time?

I decided to travel to Sommarøy to find out.

The first vexing issue was that I would have to hurry if I wanted to reach Sommarøy – the bus was leaving at the inconveniently precise time of 11:30. If I missed it, I would have to wait until tomorrow. But this was, after all, I reasoned, Tromsø, not Sommarøy. And no town can be an island.

Once on board, the bus crosses bridges and skirts fjords, passing small villages as the traffic gradually thins. Beyond Eidkjosen, the road climbs away from the water's edge and finally leaves Tromsø's outer orbit.

One hour and 40 minutes later, we arrive in Sommarøy, a village of around 300 people whose population swells in summer and on weekends when Norwegians retreat to their holiday cabins. I am instantly bewitched. Up close, houses on stilts rise above tight harbours while colourful homes dot the islands against a stirring backdrop of mountains still snowcapped well into midsummer. And out beyond this fissured coastline cut through with fjords, ice caps and high-altitude valleys, lie the wild seas of the North Atlantic.

The first person I meet in Sommarøy is Ewa Kaczyński, a Polish tourist who tells me that she was drawn here by the publicity surrounding the ill-fated 2019 campaign. "I always wanted to see the midnight Sun," she tells me. "I lead a very busy life back home, and the idea of not having to worry about time for a few days was really appealing."

I ask her what she thinks now that she's here.

"I'm not sure. The first day I was a little bit disappointed because, of course, time is necessary for the world to function. Restaurants and shops closed when they said they would. And reception at the hotel wasn't open overnight. But then I took a deep breath, turned off my phone and found myself relaxing more. I can do that here. And maybe just having the conversation about time was enough – it does seem to matter less here than it does back home.

Dutch traveller Wouter De Wit has embraced the perpetual daylight. "It's wild," he says. "I went for a midnight swim yesterday. The Sun was out and I wouldn't have been able to guess what time it was if I didn't have a watch. It was a bit cold, though…"

Locals, meanwhile, were more reluctant to speak, at least on the record. The media clamour surrounding the campaign, and the clumsy way that Innovation Norway handled the whole affair left many wary, and not a little tired of the matter.

"Look, it was a fun idea that we used to talk about every now and then," says a hotel worker who asked not to be named, as the 2019 campaign remains a sensitive topic. "In summer, we sort of live outside time anyway. If no-one is around, sometimes a shop will close so that the owner can go fishing. The kids stay up late because there's no school the next day. And lots of people are on holidays, so life is more relaxed. But then it became a thing."

"Has it been good for the town?" I ask.

"Not at the beginning," the hotel employee tells me. "It was all visitors wanted to talk about. But now, a few years later, it's OK. It's kind of back to how it was like before… and it brings people here. Now the world knows about Sommarøy."

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Later, as I fall asleep at the Sommarøy Arctic Hotel, the town is so quiet that it is difficult to tell the difference between the hours – there is no traffic, no general noise, regardless of the hour. Fully aware of the irony, I set my alarm for 03:30 to see if I can learn anything about the fluidity of time from venturing out at what, anywhere else, might be considered an ungodly hour.

I let myself out of the hotel quietly, so as not to wake the other guests, and walk around the deserted streets, then down to the water's edge. Gulls fly overhead and waders from warmer climes step daintily through the shallows. But it's different for humans. The houses are quiet, the streets empty. There's no-one around at all.

And then something happens. In purest silence, a wave of euphoria breaks over me, although whether it is because of the sheer novelty of being here or some revelatory moment of existing outside time, I cannot say. All I know is that the Sun is high in a cloudless sky at a time when – logic and lived experience suggests – it shouldn't be. For a moment, the actual time seems not to matter at all.

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