Up Helly Aa — the fire procession

Up Helly Aa is the largest of a string of fire festivals held across Shetland through the dark of winter, and the Lerwick one, on the last Tuesday of January, is the best known. It is the work of a whole year: the squads design and make their costumes in secret, and a team builds a full-size replica Viking longship, the galley, for the single purpose of burning it. The day begins with the Guizer Jarl — the festival's elected leader — and his Jarl Squad parading in full Viking dress, winged or raven helmets, axes, shields and mail, and showing the galley through the town. After dark, up to a thousand guizers in their squad costumes assemble in the blacked-out streets, light tar torches, and march in long ranks behind the galley to the burning site, the column of fire winding through the winter night. At the site they circle the ship, a song is sung, and on a signal the torches are hurled into the galley until it is a roaring blaze. Then the squads disperse to the halls, where through the night they perform their acts in turn for the host communities. The festival is a nineteenth-century construction rather than an ancient Norse rite, but it is a genuine and fiercely held expression of Shetland identity and its Scandinavian inheritance — and a way of making light and warmth and common purpose at the bleakest point of the northern year. The public procession and burning are everyone's; the all-night hall parties are Shetland's own.