Yahoo Finance This Norwegian city wants to completely abolish time
It takes a whole day (24 hours) for the Earth to rotate on axis, with the sun appearing in the morning, and setting later that night.
Our lives are dictated by the time construct around the rise and set of the sun: exercise before it rises; dinner as it sets.
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But, in some faraway places on Earth, the sun only rises and sets a mere once per year, meaning their concept of a day is already out of whack.
For Kjell Ove Hveding, who lives north of the Arctic Circle in a Norwegian town called Sommarøy, the concept of time needs a radical rethink.
This week, Hveding met with his local member of parliament to hand over a petition to do something unthinkable: completely abolish time in the town.
Gizmodo reported the driving motivator behind Hveding’s plea is to make Sommarøy a place where people can do whatever they want, whenever they want.
“You have to go to work, and even after work, the clock takes up your time,” Hveding told Gizmodo.
“I have to do this, I have to do that. My experience is that [people] have forgotten how to be impulsive, to decide that the weather is good, the sun is shining, I can just live.”
It would mean for Sommarøy’s 321 residents, they could open stores whenever they wanted and meet up spontaneously, without appointment.
The proposal follows the European Union’s decision to scrap daylight savings by 2021, which will have no effect on the town of Sommarøy anyway.
But, some aren’t convinced this clock-less way of life is feasible.
Assistant professor in animal science at Michigan State University, Hanne Hoffman, told Gizmodo that humans didn’t evolve in the Arctic, which poses problems for going against the time-grain.
“Our bodies have adapted to this 24-hour cycle generated by the rotation of the Earth. We can’t really go against evolution, and that’s what is happening in those locations. You’re going against what we’re programmed to do.”
But Hveding said he just wanted people to see it from his perspective, and chill out.
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