Light even in the dark

I wake up in the small hours wondering why we have still not left Bergen. I look out of the window and see we have left and are sliding smoothly, quietly, through the black night. I try to feel the vibration of the engine far below but just drift back to sleep.

Before coming here I checked the times of sunrise and sunset for each of our days away to work out how much darkness we’d have. Shorter, obviously, each day we go north. Today the sun is due to be above the horizon for 5¾ hours but long before sunrise it is light. It had not occurred to me that because the sun rises at such a slight angle, the subtle light of dawn and dusk go on for hours. Bengt told me not to worry about light – so right!

I am called outside by the hunks of rock on either side: craggy, rounded, snowy, shape-shifting as we move past them. I pull on layers of clothing, take the camera onto a back deck and with fingertips frozen beyond my fingerless gloves, I press the shutter like a demented thing. Huge mountains, tiny islands, remote habitations squeezed between the rock and the sea. I know I will later have to look at hundreds of photos and delete most but I cannot help myself. Everything is new, exquisite and unmissable.

Around mid-day we reach Ålesund, famous for having been rebuilt in Art Nouveau style after a devastating fire in 1904, and we leave the ship to explore. The style is not as marked as I expected but some of the decorative details are an intriguing weaving of Art Nouveau with Celtic and Norse patterns (extra). S and I start to climb a hill so we can look down at the town but the ice is treacherous and I don’t feel safe going higher. We make our way back past the elegant buildings around the harbour.

Three hours later we dock in Molde for 30 minutes. There is no reason to leave the ship apart from the novelty of being out exploring again. We walk along an uninspiring shopping street but I am entranced by the Molde firefighters using the fire engine lifting equipment to take down the Christmas decorations (extra). And suddenly I am falling. I try to regain my balance but my left foot also slides on the ice and as I fall all I know is that the camera round my neck will hit the pavement and I cannot save it. The time of knowing is huge, the time of being able to do anything is minuscule. I land on it with my mass times acceleration and see pieces of black plastic scatter outwards from the lens. Specks of glass glisten on the pavement. I am on all fours above my shattered camera, howling. It can’t be, I cannot be on this trip without it, I want to turn time backwards, not leave the ship, not walk that way, not, not, not. Passers-by want to haul me up and I find later that one is about to call an ambulance until my mum explains that it’s distress and nothing that an ambulance can help. They walk me back to the ship, shaking, bereft, in a combination of total knowledge and total disbelief. Back on board I look at my lost camera in the light. Half the lens cap hangs from its string. The UV filter has gone as has most of the plastic ring beneath it but the front lens is intact. It is marked but it is whole. How can it not have smashed in the impact that is still hurting my chest? Is it out of position? It seems not. Will the camera switch on? It will. Will it focus on the patterned floor? It will. Will it zoom? It will. Will it take a picture? It will. I am bruised, the muscles in my back hurt but it seems I still have a camera. As my mum finds out where the camera shops are in Trondheim, our main stop tomorrow, I weep with relief.