Both the boys and the girls like to go aboard the passenger ships that visit their port. Sometimes they try to talk to the passengers. They hear many strange languages—English, Dutch, French, German, and Italian. They see people from many different countries—England, Scotland, America, Holland, France, Germany, and Italy. People from almost all over the world stop at Hammerfest on the large steamers which carry them to the very top of Norway to a big rock that sticks out into the Arctic Ocean. That rock called the North Cape is less than one hundred miles from Hammerfest. Many, many people visit the North Cape each summer at the time when the sun shines there at midnight.
During the summer the girls and boys play along the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Often they find wood that has been carried in by the waves. We call such wood driftwood. When the cool evenings come driftwood is fine for burning in open fireplaces. One day some of the boys found pieces of strange wood and bark. An old sailor told them that those pieces were from the great palm trees which grow far to the south where the sun shines all the year round. It had been carried to them by the warm stream of water which also keeps their shores from freezing even in the cold winters.
Visitors who walk along the streets of that town far to the north get a strong smell of cod-liver oil. Hammerfest has a big factory where men make cod-liver oil. They take the livers from codfish and press them to get the oil. Then they put the oil in large barrels ready for ships to carry it away to other parts of Norway and to countries far away. Many girls and boys in America have tasted cod-liver oil from Hammerfest, as much of it is sold in our country.
Many of the children of Hammerfest have never seen a street-car nor a train. But they have electric lights in their homes and on their streets. Their town is too small to need street-cars and, because of the mountains and the great distances between the towns, no railroads have been built in that land so far north. But those children get their mail and packages from boats. They travel by boats too. Their boats come all the year round as regularly as trains in towns on the railroads.
Perhaps some children will think, “But surely ships cannot visit those northern shores in the winter when the sun is gone from the sky. The waters must be frozen.” But they are wrong about the northern lands near the sea. Ships come and go all the year round. Those waters are never frozen.
Those northern shores are warmed in a strange way. South of the United States of America is a body of water called the Gulf of Mexico. That body of water lies at a place on the earth where it gets warm sunshine all the year round. The water is always very warm. It is that warm water which keeps the land near the top of the earth warm.
The Gulf of Mexico seems to act in a way similar to a tank in the basement of a large house which sends water to heat the rooms far from the basement. A stream of warm water from that warm gulf is carried thousands of miles across the ocean to the shores of this northland. This is called the Gulf Stream. And the Gulf Stream keeps those shores warm enough for people to live there comfortably even during the months when no sun shines.
Some people who have traveled in many parts of the world have visited this town farther north than any other town in the world. Some of them say, “Hammerfest is not only the town which lies farthest north; it is also unlike any other town in the world.” And perhaps that is what the readers of this book are thinking too.