Up Helly Aa (meaning Up holy day) is the biggest of the fire festivals that take place in the winter months in Shetland, Scotland. This Viking themed fire festival takes place in Lerwick on the last Tuesday of January. The day involves a series of marches and visitations and in the evening is the most famous part – the torch-lit procession and Galley burning.
The festival’s roots date back to the early 1800s. Groups of young men in disguise would drag barrels of lighted tar on sledges through the streets of the islands’ capital, Lerwick. Burning tar often spilled as the men tried to navigate sledges along the narrow streets, causing damage to properties.
Tar-barreling was banned in 1874 in an attempt to stop such practices. The young men refined their activities, resulting in the first Up Helly Aa torchlight procession in 1881. It also incorporates Norse traditions and celebrate Shetland’s Viking heritage.
It's an event most of the local community takes part in, with loads of volunteers spending hours each winter getting ready for the big event and building the huge Viking longship that is at the centre of the festival.
Much of the preparations are done in strictest secrecy. The biggest secret of all is what the head of the festival, the Guizer Jarl, will wear and which character from the Norse Sagas - or stories from Norse history - he'll represent.
On the evening of Up Helly Aa almost 1,000 warriors or 'guizers', some in full Viking dress, parade in groups, known as 'squads', wearing helmets and carrying shields and swords.
Each guizer carries a fencing post, covered with sacking material soaked in paraffin. In Lerwick, at 7.30pm, a firework explodes over the town hall.
The torches are lit, the band strikes up and the blazing procession begins, snaking through the streets with the Guizer Jarl standing proudly at the helm of his replica longship, or 'galley'.
It takes half an hour for the Jarl's squad of Vikings to drag him to the burning site, through a crowd of 5,000 spectators or more.
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