United Kingdom

The three festivals in this atlas come from three corners of the country and three very different histories. Up Helly Aa was shaped around 1870 by young men in Lerwick who replaced the town’s dangerous tar-barrel burning with guizing, torches and, from the late 1880s, a Viking galley. The Notting Hill Carnival grew in the 1960s out of the Caribbean community of west London and a steel band that walked out into the street. The Braemar Gathering, run in its present form since 1832, calls itself the most prominent Highland games in the world.

Their dates follow simple rules: Up Helly Aa is always the last Tuesday in January, the Braemar Gathering the first Saturday in September, and the Notting Hill Carnival the Sunday and Monday of the August bank holiday weekend in England.