Well we survived it. Emma’s first Up Helly Aa.
It’s difficult to explain to people exactly what Up Helly Aa is. It’s probably best I paraphrase what Wikipedia says on the matter.
Up Helly Aa refers to a fire festival held in Shetland, in Scotland, annually in the middle of winter to mark the end of the yule season. The festival involves a procession of up to a thousand guizers in Lerwick, formed into squads who march through the town in a variety of themed costumes.
There is a main guizer who is dubbed the “Jarl“. There is a committee which you must be part of for fifteen years before you can be a jarl, and only one person is elected to this committee each year.
The procession culminates in the torches being thrown into a replica Viking longship or galley. The event happens all over Shetland, but it is only the Lerwick galley which is not sent seaward. Everywhere else, the galley is sent seabound, in an echo of actual Viking sea burials.
After the procession, the squads visit local halls (including schools, sports facilities and hotels), where private parties are held. At each hall, each squad performs its act, which may be a send-up of a popular TV show or film, a skit on local events, or singing or dancing, usually in flamboyant costume.
Due to the often-flamboyant costumes and the large quantity of males dressing up as females, it has earned the joke name ‘Transvestite Tuesday’.
You tend to find people in Shetland are either very in to Up Helly Aa or they can’t be doing with it. I tend to fall in the category of “can’t be doing with it”. But I needed to visit home at some point and Emma was keen to see what the fuss was about so we decided to pick Up Helly Aa week to pay a visit.
I say we survived it. To truly experience Up Helly Aa you need to party all through the night to 8am the following morning. My sister does, but Emma and I are far too boring to do that. Instead we were tucked up warm in bed by midnight having spent a day witnessing bearded men brandishing axes and throwing lit torches into wooden boats… this could only happen in Shetland.
Emma took this short video of the procession and burning.
More photos:
