Equilux to Equinox, and the race to the simmer dim is on. Some thoughts and an appropriate playlist. Sometimes we prefer the darkness, though…

(You can listen to me reading what follows, if you like, by clicking the wee arrow above…the full Spotify ‘Here comes the Light’ playlist is at the end of the text below.)

I first came to Shetland in the deepest of January darkness, 47 years ago. The Sullom Voe oil terminal was nearing completion and I had been sent north by the oil industry newspaper I worked for to interview some of the contractors involved. 

The weather was particularly bad that week. I’d been supposed to fly to Sumburgh but the British Airways Viscount from Glasgow had stumbled through an emergency  landing at Dalcross by Inverness instead. Passengers were bussed to Aberdeen and herded aboard the old P&O ferry St Clair. I was expecting a short crossing on the boat, like to Arran. I should have suspected something different when I was offered a cabin and a complimentary steak. Fourteen excruciatingly turbulent hours later I arrived in Lerwick. The steak long departed.

Of course it was still night. It never became truly light during that first visit. Mirk or murk seemed to rule, with the colossal construction project that was Sullom Voe seemingly covering everything on the Shetland mainland in a layer of sticky peat. You could taste it on your teeth. A workforce of over 7000 had been imported to the isles on what was a no-limits “cost plus” contract to bring the oil ashore and, essentially, kill coal mining. Thatcher triumphed and Scargill crumpled on the shores of Orka Voe.

In a quarry Portakabin I spoke to a man from Kirkcaldy who’d come to Shetland for a fortnight and swore he’d never leave. “Never met hospitality like it,” he said, as the wind howled and he offered me a nip of Stewart’s Rum. At Sullom Voe itself there was no security, and I had driven my hired Mini onto one of the loading jetties before I realised it was probably a good idea to stop. I dropped what remained of that car off at the airport before my flight home, with the windscreen wipers dead, the electrics intermittent. Inevitably, it was afternoon. And dark.

“Wish I had a grey Cortina…”

A decade later Iarrived in Shetland off the ferry, this time in a borrowed Cortina Estate crammed with books, records, a guitar and a few clothes. No job, on the run from the kind of troubles no-one ever leaves behind. Into more winter darkness. And bit by bit, week by week, everything changed. Working at The Shetland Times opened up a career. And the light began to break.

But it was hard, that island winter darkness. Yes, there was the whole concept of ‘foys’ and ‘peerie foys’ – the Shetlandic winter habit of partying hard and soft, from Up Helly Aa fire festivals to “in aboot the night” visits to folk’s houses for homebakes and drams. A lit Rayburn, peat reek, music and stories. But adjusting to the lack of daylight was difficult. Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD, was very real. I bought a “daylight” therapy lamp to banish the inner and outer shadows. It didn’t work as well as time.

A tale of two winters

Two winters, they say. Give yourself two winters if you’re moving to Shetland. If you can handle that you’ll be OK. Maybe you’ll stay. But you have to play the long game. Because the slow shift from winter to spring suddenly accelerates and you find yourself in a world of almost eternal light and space. Everything expands. The sky gets bigger and by the time midsummer arrives, you can find yourself  very nearly drugged, blinking and disorientated by the sense of openness and clarity. Some visitors find it overwhelming. Frightening.

A final burning

I’m writing at the true turning of the year, the spring Equilux (when hours of day and night are equal) having passed and the Equinox (when the sun appears directly over the equator) still a day away. The final Up Helly Aa (“the coming of the light” it means) is this weekend, just down the road at Delting, near Sullom Voe, which means A Place in the Sun. Daffodils are blooming, the ground is at least showing signs of drying out, and there are hints of warmth in that actual sunlight. 

Yet it’s a troubled time for some people in the archipelago. Mental health is always affected by the seasons, and maybe the coming of the light stirs and exposes thoughts and feelings we shut away in the darkness of winter. Sometimes we’re afraid to see clearly. But unless we do, there’s no growth. No resurrection. No spring.

Next week I head south, hoping to get to the launch of Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine’s excellent new album Things Found in Books, at Culzean Castle. The title track finishes my hour-long playlist for these lightening days, which you can find below if you have Spotify. It features  songs on an obvious darkness and light theme, but also one or two from Shetland that have meant a lot to me over the years. 

Because in the end, if the light possesses the power to heal, it needs a soundtrack.