Up Helly Aa - the roots and Viking traditions of the Shetland celebration

Almost 1,000 guizers, or warriors, in full Viking dress of helmets and shields and carrying flaming torches, will parade through the streets following their leader, the Guizer Jarl, whose galley boat will then be set on fire in an astounding display.

Some say the ritual echoes the cremation of great Norse leaders and religious ceremonies to mark the Sun’s return to those longest, dark winter nights in the far north.

Up Helly Aa celebrates the long Norse period in Shetland, which lasted some 600 years after the first Vikings landed on its shores between 800 and 850 AD with the islands part of the Kingdom of Norway until the 15th Century.

READ MORE: 10 of the best moments from Shetland’s main Up Helly Aa

However, Up Helly Aa is a relatively modern festival. The earliest known written account of such a gathering in Lerwick, which is dated 1824, describes an event that the author describes “as thronged with people as any fair I saw in England”.

It said: “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 night – the street was thronged with people as any fair I ever saw in England.”

In 1840, the party escalated further with burning tar barrells rolled through the streets on a bogie with a “motley mob” in masks stirring the “molten contents”.

Brian Smith, in his history of the Lerwick Up Helly Aa, said: “The main street of Lerwick in the mid-19th century was extremely narrow, and rival groups of tar- barrelers frequently clashed in the middle. The proceedings were thus dangerous and dirty, and Lerwick’s middle classes often complained about them.

“The Town Council began to appoint special constables every Christmas to control the revellers with onlylimited success. When the end came for tar-barrelling, in the early 1870s it seems to have been because the young Lerwegians themselves had decided it was time for a change.”

A group of young men with “intellectual interest” came up with new ideas for the celebration, Mr Smith wrote.

It was then that the Up Helly Aa as we know it started to take shape with the date moved towards the end of January and a Viking theme embraced.

Mr Smith wrote: “First they improvised the name Up Helly Aa, and gradually postponed the celebrations until the end of January. Secondly, they introduced a far more elaborate element of disguise – “guizing” – into the new festival. Thirdly, they inaugurated a torchlight procession.

“At the same time they were toying with the idea of introducing Viking themes to their new festival. The first sign of this new development appeared in 1877, but it was not until the late 1880s that a Viking longship – the “galley” – appeared, and as late as 1906 that “Guizer Jarl”, the chief guizer, arrived on the scene. It was not until after the First World War that there was a squad of Vikings, the “Guizer Jarl Squad”, in the procession every year.”

Mr Smith described Up Helly Aa in the lead up to World War Two as “overwhelmingly a festival of young working class men” with the event run on a “shoe string” .

Read more: Up Helly Ae in pictures: 16 mesmerising images from the historic Shetland celebration

In his account, he added: “In the winter of 1931-32 there was an unsuccessful move to cancel the festival because of the dire economic situation in the town. At the same time the Up Helly Aa committee became a self-confident organization which poked fun at the pompous in the by then long-established Up Helly Aa bill – sometimes driving their victims to fury.”

Still to this day, the first act of the Guizer Jarl is to read the Up Helly Aa proclamation , which is stuck to the Market Cross in Lerwick with the document usually making several jibes at local leaders and hidden references to topics of contention in the town.

The Guizer Jarl and his squads then move around the town, visiting schools and the elderly with the torchlight procession beginning around 7pm from Lerwick Town Hall. What follows in the burning of the galley boat, the climax of the event.

At night, the halls in and around Lerwick are full of guests awaiting the arrival of the squads as they tour around the town entertaining folk with their performances and songs. In the past, the squads entertained in open houses but the growing numbers taking part has moved this part of the event into six or seven public buildings.

Great planning and pride goes into the celebration with meetings for the festival beginning for the next event as soon as this year’s is over.

In 2023, women and girls participated in the Lerwick Up Helly Aa festival for the first time in the event's history.

It followed a long-running campaign, which had been active since the 1980s, to relax the usual gender roles surrounding the celebration.

The Lerwick Up Helly Aa is perhaps the most famous, but similar celebrations are held across the Shetland Isles between January and March.