We coast towards our harbour through a wide channel hemmed in by low, rocky islands. The sun is blinding and the sea an icy blue. Along the shore road, there’s a row of new houses. They’re the classic Scandinavian A-frame design and painted the kind of bright colours that will sustain your cheer throughout a long Arctic winter.
I’m on a voyage from Edinburgh to Bergen. If you’d put a blindfold on me for the entire voyage so far, then taken it off at this point and asked where I thought I now was, I’d have said “Norway” in an instant. But no, we’re actually coming into the Shetland capital of Lerwick.
All over Scotland, but especially in the Highland and Islands, you see the same thing: a Scandinavian makeover. And if the exteriors of the buildings look Nordic, just
