Up Helly Aa

Guizers at an Up Helly Aa celebration in Uyeasound, Shetland Islands, February 2010

Up Helly Aa (/ˈʌphɛliə/ UP-hel-ee-ə) refers to any of a variety of fire festivals held in Shetland, in Scotland, annually in the middle of winter to mark the end of the yule season. The festival involves a procession of up to a thousand guizers in Lerwick and considerably lower numbers in the more rural festivals, formed into squads who march through the town or village in a variety of themed costumes.

Origins

The current Lerwick celebration grew out of the older yule tradition of tar barrelling which took place at Christmas and New Year as well as Up Helly Aa. Squads of young men would drag barrels of burning tar through town on sledges, making mischief. After the abolition of tar barrelling around 1874–1880, permission was eventually obtained for torch processions. The first yule torch procession took place in 1876. The first torch celebration on Up Helly Aa day took place in 1881. The following year the torchlit procession was significantly enhanced and institutionalised through a request by a Lerwick civic body to hold another Up Helly Aa torch procession for the visit of the Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh.^{[1] [2]} The first galley was introduced and burned in 1889.^[3]

The modern event

There is a main guizer who is dubbed the "Jarl". There is a committee which a person must be part of for 15 years before one can be a jarl, and only one person is elected to this committee each year. The procession culminates in the torches being thrown into a replica Viking longship or galley. The event happens all over Shetland and is currently celebrated at ten locations – Scalloway, Lerwick, Nesting and Girlsta, Uyeasound, Northmavine, Bressay, Cullivoe, Norwick, the South Mainland and Delting. After the procession, the squads visit local halls (including schools, sports facilities and hotels), where private parties are held. At each hall, each squad performs its act, which may be a send-up of a popular TV show or film, a skit on local events, or singing or dancing.

Meaning

According to John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1818),^[4] up is used in the sense of something being at an end, and derives from the Old Norse word uppi which is still used in Faroese and Icelandic, while helly refers to a holy day or festival. The Scottish National Dictionary defines helly, probably derived from the Old Norse helgr (helgi in the dative and accusative case, meaning a holiday or festival), as "[a] series of festive days, esp. the period in which Christmas festivities are held from 25th Dec. to 5th Jan.",^[5] while aa may represent a', meaning "all".^[6]

The Lerwick Up Helly Aa

Photographs taken at the Lerwick Up Helly Aa, 30 January 1973

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  1 – The Guizer Jarl. The Guizer Jarl is the principal character in the celebration of Up Helly Aa, which takes place on the last Tuesday in January. Each Guizer Jarl takes the name of a figure in Norse legend. This one was Flokki of the Ravens.

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  2 – The Jarl Squad. The Jarl Squad is made up of the Guizer Jarl's supporters. It is the principal of many squads, and the participants are called guizers.

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  3 – The Galley. Each year a replica of a Viking galley is built for Up Helly Aa.

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  4 – The Procession. After nightfall the galley is dragged through the streets of the town in a torchlight procession. The torchbearers are the members of all the squads, led by the Jarl Squad. Each squad chooses a theme and dresses accordingly. The themes are very varied, some historical, some topical or satirical.

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  5 – The Circle Round the Galley. When all the torchbearers arrive at the final resting spot of the galley, they form a circle round it and sing the traditional Up Helly Aa song.

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  6 – Setting Fire to the Galley. After the singing of the Up Helly Aa song, the guizers throw their torches into the galley.

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  7 – The Burning Galley. Once the galley has burned and the flames die down, guizers sing the traditional song "The Norseman's Home" before going on to a night of partying begins. Any available large room is pressed into service as a hall, presided over by a hostess who issues invitations to attend, and every guizer squad visits every hall in turn to dance and drink with the guests. As there can be dozens of squads and dozens of halls, this takes most of the night and well into the following morning. The day after is the "Hop Night" where further dances and celebrations are held.

See also

• Burning the clavie
• Olavsfestival
• Ólavsøka

External links

• Up Helly Aa: Official Website
• Up Helly Aa: Shetlopedia.com - Up Helly Aa pages including a timeline of Lerwick Guizer Jarls, Up Helly-Aa songs, photos, and other local (non Lerwick) Up Helly-Aa's.
• Up Helly Aa: Lerwick 2014, photos. Retrieved 4 February 2014.

References

1. Callum G. Brown, Up-helly-aa: Custom, Culture, and Community in Shetland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), ISBN 1901341070, pp. 126-139.
2. "It cost £4,940 15/6d to build, now monument to civic splendour is 125". The Shetland Times. 2008-07-25. Retrieved 2008-12-26.
3. "The Galley". Up Helly Aa. NB Communication. Retrieved 29 January 2014.
4. John Jamieson (1818), "upp-helli-a'", An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language; in which the Words are Explained in their Different Senses, Authorized by the Names of the Writers by whom they are Used, or the Titles of the Works in which they Occur, and Deduced from their Originals, Edinburgh: Printed for A. Constable and Co., and A. Jameson by Abernethy & Walker, OCLC 4363471.
5. William Grant, ed. ([1931–1975]), "helly", The Scottish National Dictionary, Designed Partly on Regional Lines and Partly on Historical Principles, and Containing All the Scottish Words Known to be in Use or to have been in Use since c. 1700 5, Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association, OCLC 780478 Check date values in: |date= (help), 10 vols., as reproduced in Victor Skretkowicz; Susan Rennie; William A. Craigie, eds. (2004–), Dictionary of the Scots Language = Dictionar o the Scots Leid, Dundee: University of Dundee, OCLC 57069714 Check date values in: |date= (help).
6. "uphalie-", Scottish National Dictionary, reproduced in the Dictionary of the Scots Language.