Where: Lerwick, Shetland
£: Anyone can view the morning marches and the evening procession. Spectators may watch from the pavements alongside the roads, no tickets are required.
What is it?
Up Helly Aa in Lerwick claims to be Europe’s largest fire festival and has been an annual tradition since around the 1880s. The festival features a fire-lit procession, Viking longboat burning, and dancing and singing.
The emergence of Yuletide and New Year festivities in Lerwick came some time after the Napoleonic Wars, when soldiers and sailors came home with rowdy habits and a taste for firearms. As Lerwick grew in size, the celebrations became more elaborate and in the 1840s participants introduced burning tar barrels into the proceedings.
In around 1870 a series of new ideas and the improvised name Up Helly A’ were introduced into the proceedings. The celebrations changed to the end of January and a far more elaborate element of disguise – “Guizing” – was added into the new festival. A torchlight procession and Viking themes began to be introduced to the town’s festival. In the late 1880s a Viking longboat – the “galley” – appeared. In 1906 the “Guizer Jarl”, or chief Guizer, arrived on the scene. Then after the First World War there was a squad of Vikings, known as the “Guizer Jarl Squad” added to the procession.
Today the numbers participating in the festival have become much greater, and the resources required correspondingly larger. Whereas in the 19th century individuals kept an open house to welcome the Guizers on Up Helly A’ night; men and women now gather in the halls throughout the town to entertain the locals. However, despite the changes there are numerous threads connecting the Up Helly Aa of today with its predecessors 150 years ago.
This year’s procession will light up at 7.30pm and head through the town to the site where the galley (replica longboat) is then burnt. Following the procession the squads head to the halls for dancing and merriment.
More info: www.uphellyaa.org