Contemporary Arts
Fire Festival
Tim strongest impression left on seeing the full ceremonial of the Shetland midwinter fire festival, the Up-Helly-Aa, is of its complete rightness for this place and among these people. As the great day, January 29, rises to its climax of the burning of the Norse war-galley and the en- suing night unrolls in a non-
r stop carnival of dancing, drinking and general letting-down of back hair, there is never observable, a single trace of self- consciousness on the part of any Shetlander, whether participating or merely spectating. The stranger is welcome, within limits, to enjoy watching it all, even to take part in the night- long carnival, but no concessions are made to him; he can take it or leave it, exactly as he finds it, and no Shetlander would turn a hair if every foreigner (i.e. anyone except Shet- landers and Orcadians) were to keep away from it all. The occasion which provides one of the most spectacular survivals in all the annals of British folklore is totally devoid of publicity- appeal . . . which possibly accounts for a good deal of the naturalness and spontaneity that go with this business of grown men solemnly—and splendidly—dressing up in Viking costume, building with lovingly careful detail a miniature Norse wa'r-galley, and then after the appropriate ceremonies, burning it to ashes.
Up-Helly-Aa, approximately meaning 'the end- ing of the Yuletide period,' is mainly a revival within the past century of certain remembrances of old Norse custom. The Viking seafarer, chafing under the enforced quietude of winter, when gales and dark days kept him land-bound, welcomed the closing days of the winter solstice as marking the near approach of spring. Cer- tainly all over Northern Europe there are surviving customs of marking this period with sympathetic magical happenings—fires being symbolically burned to lure back the reluctant sun. And in Shetland, as in Scotland and all Scandinavia, ritual fires were lit and some com- munal gaiety aroused in these midwinter days, for centuries continuously.
The spectacle reaches its climax precisely as all sacrificial occasions should, in the total de- struction of an object which has intrinsic value, but which is gladly destroyed as a gesture towards whatever gods or god-like powers are being invoked. Preparations occupy a demo- cratically elected committee for hundreds of hours of leisure time during the winter days pre- ceding Up-Holly-Aa, in the planning and build- ing of the galley, in composing the Proclamation, in designing and making the wide variety of costumes—both fanciful and fantastical—that the torch-bearers'will wear on the great night.
Committeemen• only are eligible for the role of the Guizer Jarl (the disguised earl, or leader of the ceremony), a man who, in Lerwick, is King for a Day, and can never again occupy this great office. He chooses from among his friends his own squad who, traditionally, dress as his crew of Norse warriors and who form the immediate custodians of the galley as it is dragged through the streets to its doom. Other committeemen invite their friends to join their squads, who unite to form a procession of any- thing up to five or six hundred torch-bearers accompanying the galley on its journey. The carnival note is struck by these groups, which have planned, conferred and schemed through- out the winter to devise the most striking, most novel or most beautiful ideas for costuming. Usually each squad works to an idea taken from some topical item of news, a trend in fashion, a famous personality—and the entire business is strictly a masculine preserve. No wife, sister or • sweetheart is permitted to know anything in ad- vance; costumes are designed and made by the men themselves, working in winter evenings in quiet sheds, warehouses or huts borrowed for the purpose. The whole procession forms up rapidly in a few minutes; the squads each being given an assembly point where they receive their torches, then proceed to the marshalling point where they are met by the Guizer Jarl's squad accompanied by the fullest band that the city can muster. At a signal the hundreds of torches are lit and the procession begins.
No other folk ceremony to be seen in Europe carries so authentic an atmosphere as this, as the perfect miniature warship, mounted on a wheeled carriage, is processed through a mile or more of streets, guarded and followed by its crew of Vikings and several hundred Shetlanders dis- guised as eighteenth-century courtiers, Olympic athletes, zoological oddities, Arabian horsemen, comic Lauderesque Scotsmen, Mexicans; or in fantastic dress ingeniously working out some essentially private Shetlandic joke on local government, a well-loved (or well-disliked) local character.
Specially arranged songs—Victorian in their melodic and verbal structure, but none the less appropriate to the occasion—are sung, the Guizer Jarl leaps from the galley and a lone bugle-call sounds; instantly the torch-bearers, circle after widening circle, fling their blazing brands into the galley. Three, five, possibly ten thousand watchers stand around absolutely silent as the little ship, fruit of hundreds of hours of fine car- pentry, paintwork, decoration, goes up in flames . . . nothing survives except a handful of nails and a few metal fastenings.
The night is spent in dancing and drinking, with every squad in its finery Visiting every 'hall,' or dance-and-food centre; entry is jealously guarded to these and only correctly invited guests can join in the fun, watch the elaborate impromptu cabarets by the various troupes of islanders, and receive the hospitality of the island ladies who have organised this side of the affair.
Up-Helly-Aa is a perfect communal event; popular favour gets a man into the organisation and wealth and prestige are not usable levers; funds are raised locally to pay for materials for the ship and the costumes and none of the latter (except the Viking dress of the leading squad) survives to another year; everything contributing to the occasion has to be newly made every time, and every part of it is destroyed on the night or very soon after. A heroic and memorable occasion of conspicuous waste—an economist's nightmare—and an occasion which annually re- impresses the Shetlander with his ultimate dependence on the mercies of sun, wind and
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