(Image credit: Dave Donaldson/Getty Images)
Shetland’s Up Hella Aa fire festivals – during which Viking longships are set on fire – are just one manifestation of the strong Norse influence on this isolated archipelago.
I
It was 8:00 a.m. but the sunrise was just beginning to redden the corners of the long January night in Lerwick, the capital of the Scottish archipelago of Shetland. A few fireworks rang out above us as a group of men passed around a flask of whiskey – the best defense against the icy wind that blows over the Shetland Islands like a poltergeist all winter .
There was a commotion behind the doors of a huge hangar-like hangar, which opened to reveal a vast wooden longship, 30 feet from stern to bow, carved in the shape of a fearsome dragon and painted an icy blue. This was the galley, the ceremonial burning of which would take place later that night, the focal point of the Up Hella Aa festival – a pyromaniac celebration of the return of light after winter and a tribute to Shetland’s proud northern heritage .
Around the corner, the pounding of feet, the clanking of steel and the swelling sound of drums, punctuated by loud battle cries: a band of marauding Vikings, known as the “Jarl Squad”, are the main players in the festivities. They spent the day parading the galley through the city in resplendent Viking clothing – turquoise cloaks, winged helmets, axes and shields – while stopping at various places to sing Norse songs; pose for photos; and eat, drink and party. The leader of the squad, elected 15 years in advance, is known as “Guizer Jarl” and disguises himself as a historical Viking; This year’s incumbent, the magnificently bearded Richard Moar, chose Haraldr Óláfsson, who died in a shipwreck off the south coast of Shetland in 1248.
Up Helly Aa takes place in Lerwick on the last Tuesday in January each year (Credit: Daniel Stables)
In 2024, Viking culture also took its first tentative steps into the 21st century: for the first time, women and girls participated as members of the Jarl Squad.
“It’s really our New Year – we don’t go to Hogmanay that much,” said Lyall Gair, who served as Guizer Jarl in 2017 and helped organize this year’s procession. “Burning down the kitchen every year and building a new one is the symbol of a new beginning. But it also gets you through the winter – it’s something to do!
The galley, like the Jarl Squad costumes, are entirely made by locals, amateurs who voluntarily give up their evenings between October and the end of January. “It’s supposed to mark the end of our winter, but it never really does,” Gair said. “So we burn and burn and burn.”
Up Helly Aa is just one manifestation of the strong Nordic influence of the Shetland Islands, located 200 miles west of Norway and part of the Kingdom of Norway until 1472. Cultural cross-pollination with Scandinavia continued over the centuries that followed.
“Shetland is like the central station of the waterways,” Shirley Mills, director of the Shetland Fiddlers’ Society, told me. “We are halfway between Norway, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, America and Scotland. But sometimes we feel more Scandinavian than Scottish.”
As part of the festivities, volunteers build a Viking galley which is paraded through the streets and ceremonially burned. (Andrew J Shearer/Getty Images)
Shetland folk music, like that of Norway, is based on the fiddle rather than the bagpipes, ubiquitous in mainland Scotland. Folk songs tell waterspoutsmischievous creatures analogous to Scandinavian trolls who are said to have taught the islanders many of their fiddle tunes.
Where and when to celebrate
The Lerwick event takes place on the last Tuesday in January each year, but the full Up Helly Aa season continues until mid-March, when there is no doubt that the sun will return. There are 11 festivals in total, in different towns and villages across the Shetland Islands; Lerwick Up Helly Aa is by far the largest, with 900 torchbearers in the main evening procession.
The town center of Lerwick (population 7,000) is dotted with streets named after King Harald, St Olaf and King Haakon. Among the gray sandstone buildings are brightly painted buildings, constructed of wood or corrugated iron, resembling Icelandic fishermen’s huts.
Outside the town, road signs give place names in English and Old Norse. I was staying in the village of Veensgarth (Vikingsgarðr; Viking Farm). The neighboring hamlet was called Tingwall (Þingvǫllr; Parliament Field), sharing its translated name with the Icelandic site Þingvellir, the site of the world’s oldest parliament. Likewise, it was in Tingwall, on a small promontory at the bottom of a loch, that the first parliament of Shetland was held between the 13th and 16th centuries.
Norse echoes also dance across the tongues of Shetland speakers, the indigenous language of the islands (also known as Shaetlan and Shetlandic). Shetland is often considered a Scottish dialect rather than a language in its own right – but this is a political distinction, linguist Viveka Velupillai told me as we sat in her living room at Uradale Farm, near the village of Scalloway. “Analysis shows that Shaetlan is more different from Scots and English than Swedish is from Norwegian, and yet these two languages are considered separate languages. As linguists say, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy,” she said. “We estimate that between 30 and 50% of Shetlanders speak Shaetlan, but we do not have exact figures because this option is not included in the census.”
Clues to Shetland’s Nordic heritage can be seen in Lerwick’s street names and colorful buildings (Aiaikawa/Getty Images)
Shetland’s main ancestors are Scots and Norn, an extinct language derived from Old Norse whose last speaker died in 1850. Words of Norse origin are still heard in Shetland: filsketmeaning “mischievous good humor”; of meaning “you”; And That meaning “that”, for example.
However, with the rise of English over the past 200 years, Shetland has been stigmatized: it has disappeared from school usage and Shetlanders have been conditioned to view their language as a crude vernacular, inappropriate for a formal or official use. “To this day, Shetlanders consider speaking English to be ‘speaking properly,'” Velupillai said.
Her project, I Hear Dee, seeks to change these attitudes and raise the profile of Shetland, both among speakers and outsiders.
Before leaving Uradale, Velupillai showed me a collection of Fair Isle knitwear, which she makes herself from the farm’s organic yarn, collected from native Shetland sheep – one of the smallest British breeds and among the oldest. Fair Isle knitwear is one of Shetland’s most famous exports and, again, it carries a strong Scandinavian influence with its colors and geometric patterns reminiscent of Icelandic and Norwegian styles.
Native Shetland sheep are one of the smallest British breeds (James Warwick/Getty Images)
Eager to find out more, I returned to Lerwick and visited the workshop of Joanna Hunter, whose business, Ninian, sells traditional Shetland knitwear. “The patterns may look similar, but look closely and you’ll see a lot of variety,” she said, showing me sweaters, hats and scarves. “Shetland knitwear is associated with Fair Isle [the southernmost of the Shetland Islands], but each island has its own style – different colors, vertical panels rather than horizontal stripes, etc. The combinations are endless. » Shetland Wool Week attracts textile enthusiasts and professionals from around the world each autumn and is the only event on the calendar that rivals Up Helly Aa in size and importance.
“Knitting is at the heart of the Shetland identity,” Hunter said. “This completed the crofting [traditional farming] life – the women knitted while the men were at sea.” She showed me a leather knitting belt, a traditional tool that allowed people to knit and walk at the same time. “There have never been any idle hands in Shetland,” she said.
As night fell, Lerwick was plunged into even greater darkness as all its street lights were turned off, highlighting a bright moon and the twinkling lights of oil tankers floating on the North Sea. A flare gun traced a red trail across the black sky and the Jarl Squad began their evening procession, this time accompanied by hundreds of people, all holding flaming wooden torches that blew out clouds of sparks and a smell of paraffin throughout the city. The galley was waiting in a downtown park; the procession converged on the boat, throwing their torches there one by one.
The burning of the Viking ship symbolizes the return of light after winter (Credit: Daniel Stables)
As the boat caught fire, 11 ‘rooms’ in Lerwick – the town hall, primary schools, community centers – began preparing for a party that would last until mid-morning the following morning.
Mountains of sandwiches, unlimited alcohol, orchestras of violins and accordions are the fuel for a night of folk dancing and performances by traveling “squads”, who travel between venues presenting comedy sketches and performances. dance routines.
The next day is a public holiday here, which is just as well; Like their Viking ancestors, today’s Shetlanders know that the best way to start a new year is with a monumental hangover.
—
Join over three million BBC Travel fans by liking us on Facebookor follow us on Twitter And Instagram.
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a hand-picked selection of can’t-miss features, videos and news, delivered to your inbox every Friday.
;