Sunrise and sunset in Tromsø

Sunrise and sunset through the year

Times for the 15th of each month in Tromsø local time, 2026.

Tromsø sits far enough north that the sun does not rise at all for part of the winter, and does not set for part of the summer. Both extremes make a fixed wake-up time much harder to hold.

The months that wreck your mornings

In Tromsø the latest sunrise of the year is around 11:42 in January. If your alarm goes off before that, you are getting up in what your body still considers night. That is not a motivation problem. Your circadian rhythm is driven by light hitting receptors in your eyes, which trigger the cortisol rise that makes you feel awake. No light, no signal — so the usual advice about willpower misses the mechanism entirely.

The full guide to waking up before sunrise covers how to fake the missing dawn, and why light beats discipline for shifting a body clock.

What actually works when the sun is not up yet

• Put light where you land. A bright lamp on a timer, or a sunrise lamp, gives your body the signal your window is not providing.
• Get outside within an hour. Even an overcast winter morning delivers far more light than any indoor room.
• Anchor the wake-up time. Consistency matters more in winter, not less — a drifting schedule plus a dark morning is the worst combination.
• Remove the easy off switch. Dark mornings produce the deepest sleep inertia of the year, and that is exactly when alarms get dismissed on autopilot.

Other cities

Elsewhere in Norway:

• Oslo

• London
• Manchester
• Edinburgh
• Dublin
• New York
• Chicago
• All cities →

Working out a bedtime for a dark winter wake-up? The sleep calculator will do the maths.