Make the most of Unst
Soak up the peace and tranquillity of the Shetland Islands – even during the annual Viking rampage
A puffin on the rugged cliffs of Unst
Have you ever met a Viking from Leicestershire? I’ve met four. The setting was fitting: the Up Helly Aa longboat burning festival in Unst, a wild and woolly outpost in the Shetland islands.
This makes it the northernmost of the inhabited British isles, and not much further from Bergen, Norway, than it is from Aberdeen.
It was February. In fact it was Valentine’s night but I’m not sure my wife Nerys fully comprehended the sheer
of the occasion.
It was nipple-snappingly cold. And such a gale was blowing, she couldn’t hear me shouting: “It’s starting to rain.” We had mustered in the boathouse, along with what seemed like most of the island’s population (632 at the last census).
And there were the tourist hordes, of course. My wife and I. Two German students. That was it.
The Leicestershire Vikings don’t count as tourists. More on them later.
Some serious effort had gone into the fancy dress, and some serious effort was going into the drinking. There were men and women dressed as Christmas trees. Middle-aged schoolchildren in peaked caps, jesters, jockeys and Union Jack-clad English Johnnies. It was a Technicolor drunken dream team who promptly trooped outside.
They lit their torches, held them aloft in the gale and started marching the half mile or so down the hill to the foreshore in Uyeasound, where the galley lay ready for burning.
At their head were the Vikings. This lot weren’t in fancy dress, they were in ceremonial regalia. Up Helly Aa (literally Up Holy
All) is the name given to any of the 12 fire festivals running in Shetland to mark the end of the yule season.
Each of the groups that make up the procession follow the Jarl’s Squad, the Jarl being the chosen man (and it’s always been a man so far) who leads the festival and chooses the tone of it.
His squad wear the full Viking rig – feathered helmets, dramatic cloaks, painted shields and huge swords.
Andrew Hunter – 2020’s Jarl – was joined by his grandfather, father and two sons. His shield is the original Unst one from 1911.
Up Helly Aa reaches its climax on the sand. All the hundreds of torches of the procession encircle the galley – an elegant bit of boatbuilding boasting a masthead in the shape of a dragon.
The torches rain down on the boat. Some of the bright, clumsy arrows pass through to the other side, but the whisky-happy clowns and Christmas Trees couldn’t care less.
The boat takes. The flames roar higher. Merriment abounds. Primal demands are satisfied.
In front of us a merry group of four men turn to offer a hip flask. Don’t mind if I do.
“Tur Langton!” they shout. Some sort of Shetland dialect, no doubt. But