Get Up, It’s 9:30!
Before traveling to Iceland, we knew the country experienced incredibly long summer days. We had read that parts of the country receive nearly twenty-two hours of daylight in June. What we didn’t fully appreciate was how much that endless daylight could play tricks on your brain.
Many evenings we’d finish dinner around 10:00 p.m., yet it still looked like late afternoon outside. Some days, 6:00 p.m. felt like 2:00 p.m. It was surprisingly easy to keep packing activities into the day long after our bodies should have been winding down. Your mind would tell you it was still daytime, even when the clock said otherwise.
The constant daylight became one of the most unexpected challenges of the trip. It also led to what may have been the funniest moment of our entire time in Iceland.
It happened during our stay in Hvolsvöllur. After a busy afternoon of exploring, James had stretched out on his bed and fallen asleep.
A little while later, Brock walked into the room and announced:
“James! It’s 9:30. Get up so we can start our day!”
The problem was that Brock intentionally left out one very important detail.
It was 9:30 p.m.
Looking out the window offered absolutely no help. The sun was still shining, the countryside was brightly lit, and there was virtually no visual difference between what we were seeing and what a summer morning might look like. In Iceland during June, 9:30 at night can look surprisingly similar to 9:30 in the morning, which probably explains why the used a 24-hour clock.
James groaned and rolled over.
A minute later Brock hollored into his room, “it’s time to get dressed”.
James responded groggily “I’m getting up” as he threw off the blankets and began to pull his t-shirt over his head.
Meanwhile, the rest of us were trying—and failing—to keep straight faces.
When James finally realized what was happening, the room erupted in laughter—and he went back to bed.
In Brock’s defense, it was a pretty good prank.
The truth is that it worked because all of us had been experiencing the same thing. After several days in Iceland, our brains were constantly trying to reconcile what the clock was saying with what our eyes were seeing. The endless daylight had distorted our sense of time in ways we never expected before the trip.
Looking back, “extreme” is probably one of the best words to describe Iceland. Extreme landscapes. Extreme weather. Extreme natural forces. And during the summer, extremely long days.
Iceland’s endless daylight challenged our sleep schedules, distorted our sense of time, and gave Brock the perfect opportunity to pull off the funniest prank of the entire trip. For a country defined by extremes, it was a fitting memory
June 11, 2026 at 10:02 PM — James and Brock hike back to the car after a dip in the natural geothermal, Fosslaug, near Reykjafoss
June 11, 2026 at 11:59 pm — The Icelandic Midnight Sun —photo taken outside our AirBnB in Hvolsvöllur
June 12, 2026 at 12:47am — The midnight sun, drone footage taken by James
