According to POLITICO it's extending the day

https://www.politico.eu/article/norway-arctic-region-asks-eu-commission-for-26-hour-day/

> By extending the length of the days, Pedersen hopes that more people will be inspired to move to the remote region. Ensuring that the area is populated is “more important than ever” in light of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Pedersen added.


I don't think anyone is asking for shorter hours, they want longer days. The idea is to still sleep for 8 hours per "day", but then have (in this case) 18 hours left, instead of 16 hours left. Over a 13 day (312 hour) period, you sleep for 96 (12*8) hours - 30.7%, vs the 104 hours wen using the 24 hour cycle - so 33.3%, in effect gaining 8 hours of waking time per 13 days.

What would make (slightly) more sense (it's still pretty out there) would be a 28 hour day because that syncs up with the week, so you just lose 1 day per week, rather than it shifting relative to the week. Of course, you still have the difficulty of syncing with the calendar.

See the attached image, cropped from https://xkcd.com/320/, CC BY-NC 2.5.


Of course, in the far north (and south), the length of the night can vary from 0 to 100% of the time, so this 26 (or a 28 hour cycle) is less drastic.

Looking into this sort of thing might be sensible so we're "more" ready for the likely eventual need compare time on Earth vs on Mars.

Tim

From: tz <tz-bounces@iana.org> on behalf of Peter Krefting via tz <tz@iana.org>
Sent: 14 April 2024 11:11
To: Time zone mailing list <tz@iana.org>
Subject: Re: [tz] Vadsø, Norway mayor wants 26-hour days
 
WARNING: This email has originated from outside of EkkoSense. Please treat any links or attachments with caution.

2024-04-14 00:41 skrev Paul Eggert via tz:

> On March 20 Wenche Pedersen, the mayor of Vadsø municipality, Norway,
> asked[1] the European Commission to issue a directive allowing Norway
> to create a separate time zone for the northern part of Norway. Days
> in the new time zone would contain 26 hours instead of the usual 24.

What seems unclear to me is whether these 26 hours are then supposed to
be shorter than the normal 24 hours, or if the day is supposed to be
extended by two hours? This far north, there is not that much difference
between day and night during the middle of summer [1] (or, for that
matter, during the middle of winter). This would introduce its own set
of problems, as how to correlate weekdays and dates between places where
days are of different lengths, but I guess that can already be an issue
in places where timezones meet today.

--
\\// Peter - https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.softwolves.pp.se%2F&data=05%7C02%7CTim.Hitchins%40ekkosense.co.uk%7C42ba1be16d7542007b9408dc5c6b65cb%7C0fadb027642941ef8483b513e74ad1bf%7C0%7C0%7C638486863551982592%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=C%2BX%2BdK%2FH9CxCsL3LEdb6qK7eZ5sX9K0b8Bm78oQDkOk%3D&reserved=0

  [1] Which is another reason why DST makes no sense in countries like
Norway and Sweden; does it really matter whether the sun is set between
3 and 5 AM or between 2 and 4 AM?

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