BBC - h2g2 - Up Helly Aa - The New Year Fire Festivals

The Up Helly Aa festivals of the Shetland islands are now famous worldwide, with their torch-lit parades, Viking longship burnings, and all night dancing. The festival is a relatively recent arrival on the Shetlands however, along with it's Viking associations*.

The festival stands as a celebration of surviving the endless night and to the returning sun, a greeting for spring and thanksgiving for the passing of winter. All sounds very pagan, and indeed the various rituals of which the festival is built up have a much longer history in other liminal festivals - Hogmanay and Halloween - and it is difficult to tell which are the reminants of past festivities and which are new imports.

Antonsmass or Up helly aa was celebrated twelve days after Twelth Night in the North of Scotland for hundreds of years before the first records of festivities in Zeatland. It is at the time of the Napoleonic Wars that rowdy merrymaking was first reported; dancing, drinking and chanting, but particularly firing guns and setting fires. Why this beaviour should lead anyone to associate it with the well behaved Norse folk is impossible to tell.

The Vikings established themselves in the northern reaches of Scotland in the 9th century, and the kingdom of Orkney was established in 872AD a local parliament at Lawting Holm. Only in the mid-15th century did Scandinavian power over these isles wane.

In 1824 a visiting Methodist missionary noted in his diary that on old christmas eve (Jan 3rd) "the whole town was in an uproar: from twelve o clock last night until late this night blowing of horns, beating of drums, tinkling of old tin kettles, firing of guns, shouting, bawling, fiddling, fifeing, drinking, fighting. This was the state of the town all the night - the street was as thronged with people as any fair I ever saw in England.". And as Lerwick grew so did the festivities, and the islanders adopted the practice of carrying burning barrels of tar in the streets. This is an old mainland tradition called the Burning of the Clavie which still survives most notably in Burghead.

Despite opposition from the more upright (and uptight) members of the Zeatland community the festival went from strength to strength, but in the late ninteenth century those participating and organising these events decided things had to change. In the mode of the Victorian era the festival was updated by looking back into history, and the festival adopted its current Viking theme. Borrowing both date and name from the mainland festivity the burning barrels became burning boats in a (slightly tame) re-enactment of the Viking boat burnings.

Viking boat burnings were large ceremonial afairs, the 'sacrifice' of a valuble longship (amongst other things) required a major event, they are traditionally associated with the funery rites of a great leader, and not with any annual festival.

Since the success of the Lerwick Up Helly Aa many other towns and villages in the Shetlands have also adopted the festival, many with small regional variations.

A quick guide to this years festivals:

Scalloway 10th Jan 2003
torch-lit procession through the town, culminating in the burning of a Viking galley
Burghead 11th January

Lerwick 28th Jan 2003
The Lerwick Up Helly Aa is the most famous of the fire festivals.

Cullivoe 28th Jan 2003
The island of Yell is the second-most northerly of the main Shetland Islands, here on the island's northeast coast, overlooking the island of Unst.

Nesting and Girlsta 7th Feb 2003

Northmavine 21 Feb 2003

Yell Up 28 Feb 2003

Bressay 28 Feb 2003

Brae 21 Mar 2003
Brae's Up Helly Aa festival is the last of the season.

THE MODERN FESTIVAL

The elected head of the parade, the "Jarl", usually takes a historical psuedonym, and oganises the fesivities and entertainments for the festival, for which he will be given the freedom of the town. These duties include the building of the replica boat to be burnt, this is performed by the Jarl's squad, his team of hand-picked participents known as "guisers"* who one the day dress up to follow the boat and insigate the revelry. The boat is lead through the town and down to the sea, a parade of guisers, locals and tourists
fire procession, participants wielding blazing torches and briars,
Singing

The evenings festivities

* - for a more detailed account of the creation of Scottish National heretage see Eric Hobswambs excellent book The Invention of Tradition.
**- short for disguisers, a term borrowed from halloween celebrations.