One of the worst things with living north of the polar circle is that one tends to get depressed and sleepy during the dark season. Even here in Oslo it can be pretty bad when having a regular office job; in the middle of the winter it's dark when going to work and it's dark when getting home from work. At my home latitudes there are some few hours of daylight/"twilight" just around noon, even if the sun is below the horizon. Even further north and it's pitch dark all day around.

How does the inuits cope with that? The answer is "excess sleeping" according to a study done in the 50s. I don't remember the exact number, but I believe it was 16h/24h sleep pr day. At least it was above 12h.

I always had problems with my sleeping patterns while living above the polar circle - or, rather, I attributed it as a "problem with the society", not a problem with myself. Being awake at the middle of the night and sleeping in the daytime, it's totally natural when there is daylight or darkness almost 24/7. At the other hand, dragging the ass up from the bed in the middle of the arctic night to go to some office job, wasting the precious two hours of daylight inside an office building and then go home ... that's unnatural, on the border land to cruelty. In my family we've always had problems getting up in the mornings - but I've improved a lot after I got kids and moved south to Oslo.

Some funny anecdotes - 12-hour clocks can be quite dangerous when the sun is below the horizon. I do remember once as a child I woke up due to my alarm clock, ran to school ... but there were nobody there. I eventually discovered it was 20:30 in the evening, not 08:30 in the morning!

Same thing happened with a tenant we had living at our home for a while. He came home from work around 17:30, was extremely tired and went right to his room. Some hours later he woke up, yelled through the door: "Excuse me, what's the time?". We yelled back: "It's nine!". Him: "Why didn't you wake me up?" - and seconds later he was running for the door - and I was discussing with my wife, did any of us had any appointment that he should be woken before nine? Had he told any of us that he had some special plans for the evening? No. An hour later or so he came back laughing.; he had been driving to his work place only to discover that it was evening and not morning.