It was in Tromsø that I had my first real insight into the offbeat phenomenon that characterised North Norway. I had never before tried to visualise how it would feel to be blessed by a never-setting sun for weeks on end, only to be dragged into the deepest gloom by a never-rising sun in the winter. Looking around at the faces of passers-by, I could now understand the comment by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun in his novel Pan, set in North Norway, that the people were ‘strange and of a different nature to any he had met before’.

He wrote that one summer’s night was enough to change a child into a mature adult. But as winter closed in a ‘secretive stillness’ came over the people – ‘they brooded silently, their eyes waited for winter’. As this was summer I was not able to witness this singular transformation, but I learnt more about it from an impetuous young farmer who accosted me while I was watching the football. ‘Hi, there!’ he shouted as he clambered over a fence from his field and sat beside me. He was determined to prove that he had plenty of summer vigour, and the moment the footballers dispersed he inveigled me into helping him stack the last of his hay – ‘and then, my love, I’ll teach you about our mysterious northern yearnings’.

My educational session in the hayloft was largely verbal, punctuated by short, lively exercises of a practical nature. My mentor told me his name was Peter – ‘it’s usually shortened to Per’ – and he had lived in Tromsø all his life. ‘You see, we have to work all the hours there are in summer – and that’s when we do our loving, too,’ he added with an affectionate squeeze. ‘In the winter darkness we get too tired. Some of us can’t sleep, others of us sleep so long we don’t know whether it’s morning or evening when we wake. We get disoriented because our body clocks run amok.’ I said: ‘It sounds as though Hamlet must have been to the Arctic, the way he spoke of time being out of joint. Perhaps he wasn’t a Dane after all.’