There’s no need to emphasize how our modern world is shaped by a relentless timing system that dictates our fast-paced lives. We divide time into minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months. This temporal partition is largely based on the alternation between day and night. However, in the Arctic, this distinction can vanish for entire months. In this sense, I find it compelling to reflect on how living without night or day affects our identity and perception of time.
But, what happens during the phenomena of the midnight sun or polar night? When the sun never sets or darkness becomes constant, what happens to our identity when that fundamental time structure disappears? Without a clear reference point, what shapes our routine? Can we maintain the rhythm that usually structures our days?
Living without Night and Time as the Architect of Identity
Identity is not only built through memory and social interaction, but also through routine. Sunlight signals when we should be productive, and nighttime invites us to rest. But when this boundary dissolves, routine becomes harder to maintain, and the days seem to merge into an eternal cycle.
Personally, I wasn’t in Lapland during the summer months, but I did experience the polar night. While living in darkness is difficult due to a lack of vitamin D and the cold, locals say that the midnight sun is even more challenging. Having the sun hovering over the village at 4 a.m. makes it extremely difficult to sleep.
In the summer, although it’s hard to sleep, people tend to be more productive. The issue is that the sun’s constant presence prevents locals from stopping, reinforcing overproductivity. In contrast, the polar night places you in a state of rest, even if it’s three in the afternoon. The body stops obeying the usual time cues that once structured our routines.
On one hand, the absence of a clear beginning and end generates disorientation. Time feels like a continuous flow, and everything seems to blur together. Every day, I woke up and went to sleep in the dark—whether it was 9 a.m. or 9 p.m., the sky looked the same.
Still, this experience allowed me to engage with a new kind of temporality I hadn’t known before. My body lost the familiar sun-and-moon boundaries, but I found other ways to frame my context. It was no longer the sunset, but the end of the workday and dinner with colleagues.
These social events—our new, shared routines—helped us create time in the darkness. The end of a book chapter, a walk to search for the Northern Lights. These became new reference points that gave us a new sense of temporality.
Who Are We Without the Structure of Time?
Living without a clear separation between day and night forces us to face a fundamental philosophical question: how much of what we believe we are is simply a reaction to nature’s and society’s imposed rhythms? If time stops organizing our existence, what is left as a reference?
Perhaps, in the absence of external time, identity roots itself in the pure experience of the present—not in what’s coming or what’s past, but in what is, here and now. In that state, we might approach a more authentic version of ourselves: a self not dictated by schedules or obligations, but by the sheer sensation of being alive in a world where the sun and night no longer mark the rhythm.
The Arctic, indifferent to our reference frames, forces us to rethink our relationship with time—and, ultimately, with ourselves. Maybe by losing temporal structure, we discover a freer, more malleable, more real identity.
A Liquid and Malleable Self
When time ceases to be a rigid framework, identity becomes more fluid. Without clear references for beginning and end, the labels we usually assign ourselves lose meaning. Whether you’re a morning or night person no longer matters in such extreme places.
Thus, the collapse of the self opens space for internal and external exploration. We must create new routines and temporal boundaries, but also new ways to define ourselves. If we embrace new paradigms, a more flexible version of ourselves emerges.
If you are interested in other natural phenomena in the Arctic, you can check out: