Fired up: Fresh gender row at male-only Up Helly Aa festival
In modern Scotland, there is no place for a ban on women taking part in events like Up Helly Aa’s parade
Members of the Jarl Squad line up on the pier after marching through the town of Lerwick during the Up Helly Aa Viking festival. Originating in the 1880s, the festival celebrates Shetland’s Norse heritage.
It is a show of male-only might as 1,000 men parade through the streets of Lerwick, torches burning and voices roaring, in a celebration of Shetland’s Viking heritage.
Now pressure appears to be growing on the organisers of Up Helly Aa to admit women into the main procession that accompanies the chief – or Guizer Jarl – as he makes the journey to his burning galley boat. Calls to admit women to the procession in recent years have broadly been met with weary derision from those who are proud of the Lerwick tradition that has become a popular promotional tool for tourism to the islands, with the jarl and his supporters attending events in Edinburgh and New York in recent years.
But it would appear that support for a more gender-balanced event could be growing. A number of shops in Lerwick, which traditionally dress their windows in celebration of Up Helly Aa, have included female Vikings in their displays.
Yesterday morning a group called Reclaim the Raven, which references both the Lerwick crest and Norse mythology, pinned an alternative message to the Mercat Cross in the town at 5am – around an hour before the Guizer Jarl traditionally pins up his proclamation in the same spot.
The alternative message depicts Gna, a messenger of Frigg, the goddess of foresight and wisdom, and asks “where are your dottirs [daughters]?”.
A statement said: “We hope the Up Helly Aa committee would show these and engage with everyone in bringing a bright and inclusive future to this festival that is loved around the globe.
“No-one wishes to see Up Helly Aa become better known for the exclusion of woman and girls than for being the biggest and best fire festival in Europe.”
A web cam captured two men taking down the Reclaim the Raven message and putting it in the back of a van at around 8am yesterday.
Zelda Pennington, a member of the group, said attempts to get women into the main procession were “stonewalled” by the Up Helly Aa committee. Another group, Up Helly Aa for Aa, is also active in campaigning for the inclusion of
“Our main concerns are that Up Helly Aa also has a junior festival in the schools, so children are getting exposed to this exclusion of girls at a very young age…”
ZELDA PENNINGTON
Reclaim the Raven spokeswoman
women in the event. Ms Pennington said: “Rather than be confrontational – and we really didn’t want to cause any damage to an important festival to Shetland – we decided we wanted to do this alternative message.”
She said: “Our main concerns are that Up Helly Aa also has a junior festival in the schools, so children are getting exposed to this exclusion of girls at a very young age, at a primary age. This year they couldn’t get enough boys from Lerwick to take part, so instead of opening it up to girls from Lerwick, they opened it up to boys from all over the islands.”
Other Up Helly Aa festivals in Shetland include women and girls in the event. Some believe that women should hold their own Up Helly Aa given the 1,000-strong parade is now at saturation point. Up Helly Aa first started in the 1880s and was loosely tied into the old celebration of Yule. It latterly evolved into a celebration of Shetland’s Viking heritage. Shetland Isles Council, which gives no funding to Up Helly
Aa, puts on a civic reception for the Guizer Jarl every year with the day after the event a public holiday in Lerwick.
Malcolm Bell, convener of Shetland Islands Council, said: “Lerwick Up Helly Aa is a privately run event, run by the community, and the format is therefore a matter for their organising committee.”
The Up Helly Aa committee was contacted yesterday, but no-one was available for comment.
Last year was a historic one for Scotland as, after years of sometimes bitter disputes, women took part in Hawick Common Riding for the first time and Muirfield Golf Club, home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, finally admitted its first-ever women members.
It is shameful that it took so long for half the population to be accepted as equals in this way and that attitudes left over from the days when women were denied the vote managed to persist for so long. And yet still they persist.
The main event of Up Helly Aa is a wonderful, torch-lit parade through the streets of Lerwick in Shetland that celebrates the islands’ Viking heritage. But, dating back to 1820, this is an all-male affair.
So what, some might say, insisting Viking warriors were men. But surely, even if this were true, we can choose to move on and celebrate Vikings in a way that includes everyone.
And there are stories of Viking ‘shield maidens’, women who did go into battle, that date back to the early Middle Ages. Some have dismissed these accounts as little more than myths but, recently, scientific evidence has emerged that supports them. In 2017, the remains of a body in a warrior grave in the Viking Age town of Birka in Sweden were identified as female using genetic techniques. The grave goods included a sword, an axe, armour-piercing arrows and two shields.
And in December, archaeologists excavating a 2,500-year-old tomb reported they had found four women buried together with weapons, horse-riding equipment and other items associated with warriors in a Scythian burial site in the Russian village of Devitsa. These were, it has been suggested, the real-life ‘Amazons’ described by the ancient Greeks. About a third of Scythian women’s remains have reportedly been found with weapons and some had war wounds.
So it seems fairly clear that women in some societies did go into battle and the idea they should not is a later cultural invention, one so strong that, for some, it still makes the idea appear ridiculous.
The modern British Army has learned to value women in the military and so, it seems, did other past cultures. After campaign group Reclaim the Raven pinned a proclamation to the Mercat Cross in Lerwick asking “where are your dottirs?”, surely it is time for the organisers of Up Helly Aa to admit women to their warriors ranks.