Written by: Ewan Jamieson, Lerwick, Shetland
Date: 28 January 2025, Tuesday , Up Helly Aa Night
Most folk outside Shetland think winter is just cold and quiet up here. But every year, on the last Tuesday of January, we remind ourselves and the world, if it’s looking, that we’re made of fire as much as sea and wind.
I’ve lived in Lerwick all my life, and yet Up Helly Aa still grips me the same way it did when I was a bairn standing on my father’s shoulders. Tonight, just after six, I stood on Commercial Street and watched the torches appear, first a few flickers, then a tide of flame coming down the road behind the Jarl Squad.
You can feel it in your chest before you see it fully. The drums, the shouting, the crunch of boots against the pavement. There’s a moment when the Guizer Jarl steps forward, and the whole crowd goes quiet, even with the storm winds rushing in off the harbor. His armor gleamed under the torchlight, and the longship this year painted deep blue with silver dragon heads, waited in the square like something resurrected.
We all know what comes next, but it never loses its weight.
The signal went up. Torches lifted. And then every man in the procession hurled their flame into the galley. The ship caught fast, roaring up into the sky, heat hitting us in a single wave. Folks always say it feels like the darkness is giving up for the year, just burning away right in front of us.
I watched it with my hands shoved in my pockets, the sparks blowing sideways in the wind. And even though we do this every year, it still feels like a promise we make to ourselves:
We’ll get through the long nights.
We’ll light our own way.
We’ll carry something old forward into something new.
That’s Up Helly Aa for you. It isn’t a festival we put on.
It’s a heartbeat we share.
I can understand why!🤣