India, April 25 -- When Catherine Thoresen told her friends that she was moving to the Arctic to grow vegetables, they looked at her in disbelief. "They thought it would be just potatoes and carrots," she says, "but we have so much diversity." Thoresen is a co- owner and manager at Kvitnes Gard, a farmstead, fine-dining restaurant and guesthouse in Norway's Lofoten Islands.

"What's special about growing [produce] here is we have the midnight sun," Thoresen explains. The growing season is short, but it's offset by the long summer days that extend periods of photosynthesis and accelerate growth. As I followed Thoresen around the farm, it seemed it wasn't only the plants that were maximizing their time under the endless mid-June sun: wooll...