Annual Viking Fire Festival Held on Scotland's Shetland Islands

Annual Viking Fire Festival Held on Scotland's Shetland Islands The annual Viking-inspired fire festival of Up Helly Aa, described by organizers as “a northern Mardi Gras,” was held in the town of Lerwick in Scotland’s Shetland Islands on Tuesday, January 30. The festival involves a large torchlit procession led by a “Guizer Jarl,” or Chief Viking, and a “Jarl Squad,” which lights the galley by throwing torches into it. The present form of Up Helly Aa is about 140 years old, but the traditions of the festival, including a torchlit procession and galley burning, go back “12 centuries or more” and are linked to ancient Norse rituals marking the Sun’s return after winter, according to Promote Shetland, which helped organize the event. Before the 19th century, the event was “often riotous” and law enforcement was often summoned “to curb trigger-happy drunks firing guns in the air” or to stop people “dragging a blazing tar barrel through the streets,” they said. Local versions of the festival wo