We had taken the night train. Ten hours through the arctic night of Norway from Trondheim to Bodo in the middle of January. The train rattled restlessly further north with an occasional stop in a sleepy town or village. Equally sleepy we had found ourselves an empty wagon and each claimed a bench to curl up on. Every now and then we woke up to find a new and more comfortable position or to adjust our jackets that we'd been using as makeshift blankets. As the sky began to light up we had reached a snowy plateau. There was nothing else but snow. No trees, no animals, no rivers. Just as I was about to close my eyes again two statues emerged from the whiteness. They each flanked the snowy tracks and as we passed them I could identify them as two metal globes. That's when I realized we had officially crossed the Arctic Cirle.