Lerwick will have just under 19 hours of daylight on Sunday, June 21, and the longest day in the UK will still bring sunlight at midnight. The Shetland Islands town sits nearer the Arctic Circle than London, which is why night never reaches full dark there on the summer solstice.
The solstice begins at precisely 9.24am and marks the start of astronomical summer. In Lerwick, the daylight stretch is the part most residents and visitors notice: a brief five-hour period of night that never becomes black, with the sun staying close to the horizon.
Locals in Shetland call that lingering light the simmer dim. Lerwick has approximately 7,000 residents, and the town’s position at 60°N latitude puts it well north of most of Britain, where people still gather at Stonehenge to watch the sunrise on the summer solstice.
The picture is slightly unusual in that the night period is not truly dark. Complete darkness never descends, and sunlight remains visible at midnight, so the day rolls into the night without the sharp break many other places get.
That pattern does not end with Sunday. Astronomical summer continues until the autumn equinox, and June 22 is when evenings begin to draw in. For anyone in Lerwick, that means the year’s brightest stretch has already started, even if the calendar still says the longest day has just arrived.
Lerwick and the Arctic Circle
Lerwick is the largest settlement in the Shetland Islands and is situated nearer to the Arctic Circle than to London. The geography explains the light, but the experience is immediate: a place where midnight still looks like late evening, and where the summer solstice arrives with the sun never fully leaving the sky.
The Shetland Islands also carry stronger Norse than Scottish influences, a reminder that their northern identity runs deeper than one bright day in June. Even in summer, the daily average temperature in the islands remains below 13C, so the long light does not mean warm nights.
