Kathleen Jamie: from Into the Dark London Review of Books

In Aberdeen, although it was not yet five o'clock, the harbour lights were lit against the night sky. Ships were berthed right up against the street, and to reach the Orkney and Shetland ferry I had to walk under their massive prows. The ferry was berthed among other ships, and though the Hrossey - the Norse name for 'Orkney' - looked like a toppled office block, and was therefore a ferry, these other vessels were inexplicable mysteries to me, containers of purpose and might. Some carried huge yellow winches, others supported complex and insect-like antennae. The ships were named for strength and warriors, Scots and Norse: the Highland Patriot, the Tor Viking. I boarded the ferry and went at once out on deck and leaned over the rail. There was the Solar Prince (was it not he who'd kissed the Snow Queen?) and, berthed beside it, the Edda Frigg. The Edda Frigg was in the process of putting out. It pleased me that I knew what the name meant: Edda - the great Icelandic mythological poems; Frigg - Norse goddess, wife of one-eyed Odin. Off she went, the Queen of the Heavens, taking a long moment to pass, first the prow, then the low deck, then the superstructure, stirring the dirty dock water as she went.

Then it was our turn to edge out. Aberdeen's streetlights, spires and illuminated clock towers began to recede, and there was the moon, above the town. I was shivering now. Little scenes slipped by: two men hanging on the hook of a crane, stacks of ships' containers, a sudden siren wailing, a line of parked-up lorries, the hammering of metal on metal. We inched past the red-hulled Viking Crusader, then the Hrossey was out of the harbour. At the end of the harbour wall, where it crooks out into the water, stood a Christmas tree hung with fairy lights.

I'd wanted dark. Real, natural, starry dark, solstice dark, but the moon was almost full. It shone through a smirr of cloud, spreading its diffused light across the water. The moon had around it an aura of un-colours, the colours of oil spilled on tarmac. I'd been hoping for a moment at sea when there was no human light: 360º of winter sea, the only lights those carried by the ship itself. I wanted to be out in the night wind, in wholesome, unbanished darkness. But the Hrossey was, after all, only a ferry, and would hug the coast. Nevertheless, I went outside often, to stand shivering on deck. There was always a light somewhere.