Up Helly Aa

The town lights are switched off and a cloak of inky darkness envelopes us
We wait expectantly at the side of the road.

Suddenly, a maroon cuts the silence and the street bursts into the light of hundreds of tar torches held aloft,
Carried by guizers dressed in fancy dress for skits to be performed at parties lasting until the next morning in centres all round Lerwick.

Slowly the procession starts.
At the head,the Guizer Jarl in full striking Viking regalia stands aloft his galley
Pulled through the streets by his personal squad of guizers
Dressed in fur and helmets with axes held high.

The torch bearing guizers accompany the galley on an hour's circuit of the streets
We watch entranced the moving flames stutter and flare as the smell of burning tar is carried to us on the smoke of hundreds of torches slowly borne along, a snake of flickering lights in the darkness.

We move to watch the galley entering the field for the burning.
The guizers slowly close in to surround it in concentric circles.
And as the Up Helly Aa song sounds across the smoke and waning flames of the torches,
The Guizer Jarl is left, a lone figure high on his magnificent carved longship.
As he leaves the galley for the last time the flaming torches are flung in to set it alight.
Burning slowly at first but then faster and faster until only the mast is seen above the flames
Until it too cracks and falls.

The spectacle of the Shetland fire festival in the darkest days of winter
Remains in my mind for all time.