What is “Up-Helly-Aa”?
Grateful thanks to a friend for this photograph
This is no weather permitting festival. Held in mid-winter and lying on the same latitude as southern Greenland it regularly celebrates the end of the yule season (also known as the Winter Solstice). Now this is one Festival I have always wanted to see. We made an attempt one year but the weather was so terrible, alas we canceled!
I suppose as festivals go Up-Helly-Aa in its present organised format is a relatively modern festival if you call circa 1870 relatively modern. Previously, blazing tar barrels were dragged through the streets by competing groups with much drinking and riotous behaviour. My 10th of January blog post on the Burning of the Clavie also mentions the use of a tar barrel. Today, it is one of the largest fire festivals and torchlight processions in Europe. It takes place in Lerwick on the Shetland Islands, an archipelago off the northern most tip of the Scottish mainland.
For two days these pseudo-Viking warriors known as “Guizers” visit schools, hospitals and nursing homes not to rape, pillage and plunder but to sing songs, tell stories and make the whole community enjoy Up-Helly-Aa. On the evening of Up-Helly-Aa Day, usually the last Tuesday in January, over 800 Viking warriors assemble in the darken streets shouldering stout fencing posts with fire atop. At 7.30 pm a single rocket bursts over the Town Hall, a band strikes up and a blazing procession begins, led by the Guizer Jarl standing proudly at the helm of his doomed galley. The procession then weaves its way around the small streets of Lerwidk dragging the galley till it reaches the burning site, watched by a crowd of four or five thousand spectators.
The Guizers then circle the stationary longship; another rocket bursts overhead and the Jarl leaves his beautiful galley to its fate of fire. The bugle calls and 800 torches are hurled aboard the galley. Much revelry follows with fast and furious merriment long into the night. What a sight to see and what merriment to enjoy, maybe some day I will get up there!
Do check out the Up-Helly-Aa homepage for more information about this fascinating festival.
