The verses prefixed to this book were set to music (extraordinary music) by Paul Mealor as part 2 of Shine Forth a Path of Stars, and first performed at the Scottish Parliament in 2009; part of ‘Northern Waters’ appeared on the Heriot Toun website as epilogue to the Seven Sails project; parts of ‘Spar Boxes, Northern England’ appeared in things magazine, part in the catalogue of Tim Brennan’s exhibition The North; versions of ‘Summer in the North’ have appeared in PN Review and The North Star, privately published by the University of Aberdeen; a version of ‘The Food of the North’ has appeared in Petits Propos Culinaires; versions of ‘The Rich Boys of Bygdøy and other fragments of a summer’, ‘Visits in Autumn’, ‘A Letter from Copenhagen’, ‘Grim Consolations of the North’ and ‘Winter in the North’ have appeared in PN Review; parts of ‘Painting Northern Scotland’ have appeared in exhibition catalogues for James Morrison (Landscape on the Edge of Allegory) and Frances Walker (Place Observed in Solitude).

Many and various thanks are owed to Andrew Biswell, Janey Stevenson and the omnicompetent Dan MacCannell who has edited, and vastly improved, this text. Many people have with their kindness, conversation and correspondence helped to bring it into being: Tim Brennan, Pat Law, James Morrison, Frances Walker; Paul Mealor, Pete Stollery, Jeremy Huw Williams; Pat Hanley, Margaret Steward and Peter Scupham; James Stourton, Alan and Susanna Powers, Oona and Brian Ivory. Every one of my delightful colleagues in Art History at the University of Aberdeen has contributed something to this enterprise, and John Morrison’s work, especially, has opened my eyes to the Scotland of the nineteenth century. Elsewhere in the University, Isobel Cameron and Iain Beavan have offered much, as have the University Principals present and emeritus. I am indebted to the Special Collections Centre of the Library of the University for their axiomatic, unstinting help and kindness.

It remains to thank a few staunch friends who have suffered a good deal of this book at table and on walks in nasty weather to see one or other of northern Scotland’s forgotten and unspectacular lieux de mémoire: Jane Diamond, Clémence and Ralph O’Connor, Duncan Rice, Mark Gibson and Shamsu bin Mohd. Yusof, and my dear correspondent in the vile pianura, Robert Macfarlane.

Michael Schmidt and Judith Willson have proved the ideal publishers, as ever, and Judith and Helen Tookey inspiring editors.

I am permanently indebted to Aberdeenshire’s gallant and skilled medical and rescue services and to the splendid Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.

The idea for this book came from reading Gillian Clarke’s peerless At the Source (Carcanet, 2008) – if this can express for northern Scotland a fraction of what she has evoked and communicated for Wales, I will be more than content. From her lovely and secluded house, Blaen Cwrt in Ceredigion, she most generously sent us her lyric about the voice of the blackbird in our trees, with music by her son Owain. This composition, which can be sung in both quiet houses on summer evenings, joins the two happily together with the lasting thread of song.