Goodbye sun: What it's like to experience the polar night along Norway's rugged coastline

Purple and yellow sky during one morning aboard the Hurtigruten Coastal Express.

Anyone who has ventured to the far north or south during winter will have experienced the surreal phenomenon of the "polar night," during which the sun doesn't rise.  

Most people who have encountered the polar night will have done so in the Northern Hemisphere in either Norway, parts of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Finland, Russia or Sweden. The only landmass in the Southern Hemisphere to welcome the polar night is Antarctica.