The new vampire movie 30 Days of Night is set in the Arctic midwinter when it's nighttime all day, which means the photophobic creatures never have to run and hide from the rays of the sun and can wreak havoc at noon as easily as midnight.

So, what's it like to live in the way north in winter? I never met any vampires when I studied in Trondheim, Norway in 1997-98, but I was certainly surrounded by very pale people. Basically, life goes like this: You get to work, it's pitch-black outside. You leave work, it's pitch-black outside. Maybe once or twice during the day I'd look through the huge windows at the biological station where I studied plankton and see twilight. Because Trondheim is a bit south of the Arctic Circle, the sun did rise every day, but only for a few hours, sticking close to the horizon. (Maybe Norway's vampires hang out farther north, in Vadsø or Hammerfest.)

Farther north, where the sun really does stay down for days or weeks, animals lack the daily cycle of light and dark to tell them when to eat and when to sleep. A study published in the journal Nature in 2005 found that reindeer in northern Norway don't follow a 24-hour pattern in the summer or winter, but appear to eat and sleep when the spirit moves them; the researchers suggested that other animals in the far north may be the same way.

On the plus side, Trondheim never gets completely dark around the summer solstice, so you're pretty much guaranteed to be vampire-free in late June.

Have you ever been to the far north in winter? What was it like?

—Helen Fields

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