Up-Helly-Aa Celebrations in Lerwick

Up-Helly-Aa Celebrations in Lerwick

What people remember most about the Up-Helly-Aa celebration is Viking warriors burning their longship.  Most of the men of Lerwick are involved in preparing for the big night by building the ships and organizing the procession. 

You may wonder: 'Where in the world is Lerwick?'  No, it's not in Scandinavia, but Lerwick is the capital of the Shetland Islands at the very north of the UK.

Up-Helly-Aa - 2008

The honour of leading the Viking boat on its half mile journey into the water is bestowed on the Guizer Jarl.  In 2008 it was Roy Leask who proudly carried in the longship by the other 800 Vikings.  I say proudly carried down, because the honour is such that you have to serve on the committee for 15 years before you can be the chief Guizer.

 In 2009 the privilege of Guizer Jarl goes to Stephen Mouat.

History of Up-Helly-Aa

Up-Helly-Aa is a relatively modern festival. There is some evidence that people in rural Shetland celebrated the 24th day after Christmas as 'Antonsmas' or 'Up Helly Night', but there is no evidence that their cousins in Lerwick did the same.  More recently, Up-Helly-Aa is celebrated on the last Tuesday in January.

Naturally, the burning of the longship is the focal point of the evening.  But do you suppose that the crowd then disperses and everyone goes home to sleep?  It's never been known for serious Up-Helly-Aa revellers not to visit the local hostelries both before and after the boat's glorious last journey.  Also, think of those 800 Jarls building the boat, that would give you a thirst, then it would drive you to drink when your beloved boat goes up in flames.

One other aspect, anyone who has any musical skill, or any desire to sing in public, knows that they would have an appreciative audience on this night.

The emergence of Yuletide and New Year festivities in the town seems to post-date the Napoleonic Wars, when soldiers and sailors came home with rowdy habits and a taste for firearms.

On old Christmas eve in 1824 a visiting Methodist missionary wrote in his diary that '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 the night - the street was as thronged with people as any fair I ever saw in England.'

As Lerwick grew in size the celebrations became more elaborate.  Sometime about 1840 the participants introduced burning tar barrels into the proceedings. 'Sometimes', as one observer wrote, 'there were two tubs fastened to a great raft-like frame knocked together at the Docks, whence the combustibles were generally obtained. Two chains were fastened to the bogie a supporting the capacious tub or tar-barrel . . . eked to these were two strong ropes on which a motley mob, wearing masks for the most part, fastened. A party of about a dozen were told off to stir up the molten contents.'

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 proceeding 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 only limited success. When the end came for tar-barreling, in the early 1870s, it seems to have been because the young Lerwegians themselves had decided it was time for a change.

Chief Guizer (Guizer Jarl)

At least in Lerwick, the Guizer fraternity is strictly a male preserve.  A politically correct Viking seems like an oxymoron.

Around 1870 a group of young men in the town with intellectual interests injected a series of new ideas into the proceedings. 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 signs 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 a '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's Squad', in the procession every year.

Up to the Second World War Up-Helly-Aa was overwhelmingly a festival of young working class men - women have never taken part in the procession - and during the depression years the operation was run on a shoestring. 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 organisation which poked fun at the pompous in the by then long-established Up-Helly-Aa 'bill' - sometimes driving their victims to fury.

Since 1949, when the festival resumed after the war, much has changed and much has remained the same. That year the BBC recorded a major radio programme on Up-Helly-Aa, and from that moment Up-Helly-Aa, not noted for its split-second timing before the war, became a model of efficient organisation. The numbers participating in the festival have become much greater, and the resources required correspondingly larger. Whereas in the 19th century individuals kept open house to welcome the guizers on Up-Helly-Aa night, men and women now co-operate to open large halls throughout the town to entertain them.

However, despite the changes, there are numerous threads connecting the Up-Helly-Aa of today with its predecessors 150 years ago.

Up-Helly-Aa Jokes

• In 2008 how many God-fearing, tax-paying, law-abiding men in Lerwick were there in the Up-Helly-Aa parade?
  Both of them.
• How does the Chief Guizer communicate with the rest of his team?
  He uses Norse code.
• What happened to the Up-Helly-Aa politically correct boat-building committee?
  It sunk without trace.

Dates for Up-Helly-Aa in Lerwick

2008 - Tuesday 29th of January
2009 - Tuesday 27th of January
2010 - Tuesday 26th of January

• See more about Up-Helly-Aa
• Up-Helly-Aa Events

However, similar if smaller Up-Helly-Aa celebrations occur in other Viking strongholds on different dates.

See more special days in January and February

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