Up Helly Aa

A day for the Jarl

The central figure is the Guizer Jarl, the chief guizer, who leads the Jarl Squad — the Vikings for the day. The Jarl’s helmet, breastplate, shield, axe, dagger and belt are passed on from year to year, but each Jarl chooses the design of their own kirtle and cloak, and the squad of 50 to 70 makes its own costumes. The other squads, about 46 of them, each have between 16 and 25 guizers in fancy dress.

The day starts early. The Jarl Squad marches through Lerwick in the morning with the galley, stops at the Market Cross to admire the Bill — a proclamation posted there from six in the morning — and poses for photographs at the Bressay Ferry Terminal. At a civic reception in the Town Hall the Jarl is given the freedom of the town for 24 hours. The squad then visits the primary schools, the hospital and the eventide homes, and in the afternoon calls at the Shetland Museum, where anyone can see the costumes up close.

Torches and fire

In the evening the squads muster on the Hillhead. At 7:15 the Jarl Squad marches up the middle of the ranks to take its place at the front, and at 7:30 a maroon signals the lighting of more than 900 torches. The streetlights are switched off, and the procession follows the galley through the dark town, watched on a good night by more than five thousand people, to the burning site, where the torches are thrown into the ship. Afterwards the squads visit halls around the town, where private parties are held, and perform their acts at each one.

The galley is 9.2 metres long. Volunteers build and paint it two nights a week from the end of October, and its colour, chosen by the Jarl, is kept secret until it appears on the day.

A modern tradition

The festival’s own historians call Up Helly Aa relatively modern. After the Napoleonic Wars, Lerwick’s Yule and New Year celebrations were rowdy affairs, and from around 1840 rival gangs dragged burning tar barrels through the narrow main street. Around 1870 a group of young men with intellectual interests changed the festival: they gave it the name Up Helly Aa, moved it to the end of January, and introduced guizing and a torchlight procession. The first galley appeared in 1889 and was burned at the Market Cross; the title Guizer Jarl dates from 1906. Smaller “country” Up Helly Aas are now held in other communities across Shetland, and from 2023 women were allowed to join squads in Lerwick.