How Many Minutes Per Day Should You Spend Outside During Winter? Tanner Garrity, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail Every year, the city of Tromsø, Norway — 77,000 strong, and one of the largest settlements north of the Arctic Circle in the world — gears up for two months of polar night. Here’s a photo of Tromsø’s skyline all lit up for an early afternoon in December. Locals see less than three hours of scattered sunlight each day (at best) during this period. Temperatures are typically around 25 °F. Tromsø is an almost obnoxiously charming place. The town’s claim to fame is that it contains the most “old wooden homes” in Northern Norway. But how could locals possibly tolerate two months of punitive cold and unrelenting darkness? You would assume they have a massive problem with seasonal affective disorder, also known as “winter depression,” which millions of Americans currently grapple with.