Up Helly Aa 2015 (the day)

The Up Helly Aa flag flying over the town hall

It looked as though it was going to rain, but I wasn't worried. Up Helly Aa NEVER gets cancelled because of the weather. Only world wars have been able to stop it (and that was probably due only to the lack of men). It was postponed at the last minute for Winston Churchill's funeral but no-one was very happy about that (and still aren't if the lack of interest in his 50th anniversary was anything to go by). Far too many sandwiches went to waste and people who'd come up specially ended up missing it. So that'll never happen again.

I wasn't in any particular hurry as I knew the Jarl's squad were getting breakfast and facial tattoos in Islesburgh Community Centre and I wouldn't be allowed in. I've been able to pass myself off as a lot of things, but I don't think even I'd pull off impersonating a large bearded Viking. After breakfast the squad were taking the galley down to the waterfront for an official photo session and then leaving it there for the rest of the day whilst they went around town visiting care homes, schools and the hospital. I thought the waterfront would be too crowded so instead waited near the town hall. Afterwards, when I saw how good the photos of the whole squad atop the galley looked, I wished I had gone myself. Instead, the first I saw of them was when they came marching up the road to the town hall, roaring and generally making a lot of noise. They did look rather magnificent. 

The Vikings are here!

Raven wings and a mighty beard

So much care had been put into the costumes and weaponry: textiles, chainmail, carved, highly polished wood, intricately patterned metalwork, and of the course the Jarl's helmet resplendent with it's raven wings. Once they'd all gone into the town hall I went down to the harbour to look at the galley. This was equally magnificent. The level of detail equally intricate. 

 








There were still quite a few people around and as I waited for a chance to take a people-free photo, I got chatting to the man who was looking after the galley. He told me his son will be Guizer Jarl next year and so this time next year he will be touring the care homes in full Viking dress rather than standing in a raincoat guarding the galley. 

Named after a penguin named after a Viking

He was dismayed to hear I wouldn't be going to any of the halls. The halls are a really important part of Up Helly Aa, but all are privately run. The festival is a really special time for Shetlanders. If islanders who have moved away are going to come home only once in the year, it will often be for Up Helly Aa. People I spoke to told me it's more important and a bigger event than Christmas, Easter or birthdays. It's easy to understand then why, although they're happy for outsiders to watch the parade, the halls are private and for friends and family only. To have a load of tourists in your hall would be the equivalent of having a load of tourists come round to your house on Christmas Day morning to watch you open your presents. You probably don't mind the tourists coming along to the carol concert or midnight mass, but there is a line you don't want them to step over. I understood this and accepted that, as much as I would like to, I wouldn't be going to any halls.

Spot the penguin

I should have known better. This is Shetland after all. People are friendly and rules are just there to, yeah, well, whatever. John told me his daughter-in-law (wife of next's years Jarl) was running one of the halls and that when he got home he would ask her if there was a spare ticket for me. He took my mobile number so he could let me know. Just in case he called over some other people and got me the phone number of someone running a different hall, so I had a backup plan if his daughter-in-law didn't have any tickets. 

 

Even the boats have beards

I spent part of the afternoon wandering round town. The window displays in the shops all had an Up Helly Aa theme. Even Specsavers had joined in with a poster depicting a Viking squad hauling a fishing boat along to the burning place instead of their galley, unaware of the irate fisherman chasing them; the caption was, of course, 'Should've gone to Specsavers'. As well as Vikings, there was quite a penguin theme. This was because the Guizer Jarl is known by the nickname 'Penguin'. There was a penguin design painted onto the galley which was named Nils Olav after a penguin in Edinburgh zoo with the same name.

The Bill had been attached to the market cross earlier that morning. It's a carefully hand-inscribed proclamation satirising local events and notable people from the past year. In red and black painted text it lampoons the discussion around school closures, the unreliability of the Northlink ferries and the controvesial Mareel arts centre. It took me several readings to understand most of it, but even though I try to keep up with Shetland news, there were still parts that were over my head. 

Crowding into the museum

The Jarl's squad was due at the museum in the late afternoon, so I made my way over in plenty of time. The entrance hall was already quite crowded with people waiting to see Vikings. A couple of guys were keeping everyone entertained with live music. The Jarl's band arrived first and they squeezed in with their bulky instruments and got set up. Then the rest of the Vikings arrived. Before they came in I would have said it was impossible to fit seventy Vikings all in bulky costumes into the already crowded space. But fit they did. More and more of them pushed through the doors and spectators were crushed back to the walls. They could have shown rush hour commuters on London Underground a trick or two.  

For their theme song, they had chosen Daydream Believer, albeit with a few word changes. As their voices reverberated around the hall, big grins on their faces, light glinting of their chain mail, swords and double-headed axes, I knew I'll never be able to hear that song again without thinking of Vikings.

Just 2 Vikings having a chat

Following the sing-song everyone piled outside where the Vikings lit their torches for a TV interview. Dousing the fire in the harbour, they then did what all good Vikings do and drove off on their bus.

TV interview

The Junior Jarl's galley

Wandering back up to the town hall I was in time to see the Junior Jarl's squad setting off on their parade. The schoolboys also have real torches and proudly set off marching, pulling their galley to the playing fields where they would burn it. It was just starting to rain, but didn't manage more than a few drops before stopping again in plenty of time for the main parade.

Schoolboys with a burning mission

I went back to my van which I'd moved to Tesco car park so I wouldn't have too far to walk at the end of the night. As I got my layers on ready to stand around for a few hours watching the main parade and galley burning my phone rang. Yes! I had a ticket. It's the custom to dress up for the halls but as I hadn't expected to go to one I didn't have any posh clothes with me. I wasn't going to let a little thing like that stop me though. I put a slightly nicer top on over my thermals and considered myself ready. 

 








By 7pm the streets were heaving. I think Shetland's entire 22,000 strong population, along with several thousand visitors had all congregated on the same few streets. I'm not used to crowds in Shetland. All 48 squads take part in the main parade. As they are nearly all holding burning torches, not all of them are wearing their costumes (or disguises). If the outfit is likely to be flammable (or affected by the weather) they wear ordinary clothes on the march and change before starting their rounds of the halls. The torches are lit, the streetlights go out.

At 7.30pm a rocket is fired from the town hall and they're off. As 1000 men wind their way round the route a ring of fire encircles the spectators. It's dark, in the distance only the line of fire can be seen. Even when they are marching behind buildings, the sky is strangely lit up in shades of flickering oranges and reds like an all-encompassing sunset.

 

 I had a great spot right at the kerbside. The smell of paraffin, the heat from the blazing torches, the singing and Viking yells, a thousand men marching past, flames flickering, everything seeming to move so quickly my eyes struggled to focus, let alone my camera. I felt like every one of my senses was being overloaded and maxed out. Still they marched. Still they yelled. Still the flames flared devouring the oxygen from the street.

Earlier John had pointed out that nowhere else could you give a thousand men a bottle of whisky each and not expect trouble. Here, they not only give them a bottle of whisky but a flaming torch and then plonk them down in the middle of this heady atmosphere. Trouble? Of course not. I don't know if it's due to the laidback Shetland attitude or if it's because this is such an important tradition. Although there's plenty of alcohol involved, it's taken far too seriously and with too much respect to be turned into a free-for-all piss-up.

Finally the squads made their way through the gates into the playing fields and stood around the galley waiting for the Jarl to disembark and give the signal for the torches to be hurled onto the galley. It caught light quickly and a year's work was turned into a bonfire. I'd moved to the road above the playing fields but was struggling to see over people's heads. Standing on tip-toe I peered over shoulders. The boat took a long time to burn and people started to move away whilst the blaze was still roaring. I got a better view then and watched as the dragon head slowly drooped and fell, succumbing to the flames.

I stayed till the fire was almost out. Most people had left by then, but I wasn't in any hurry as I didn't have to be at the hall till 9.30pm. I wandered round to the other side of the playing fields. Most of the squads had left as they needed to get into their costumes. A few men were left watching the last of the flames die down. For some reason one of them decided to do the Haka - the Maori war dance made famous outside of New Zealand by the All Blacks who perform it at the start of their rugby games. A Viking doing the Haka; now that's a cultural mish-mash I wasn't expecting to see. 

I chatted to an older guy who told me he'd spent some of his younger years around Manchester and Lancashire and then slowly made my way to the hall, buzzing from what I'd experienced so far and excited about what was to come.

 

To be continued ...




To find the continuation in which I write about the Up Helly Aa night in the halls click here.

I wrote about the Up Helly Aa traditions here and about the history here.

You can find the main Up Helly Aa website here.

A Winter's Day in Unst

Unst is my favourite island. I couldn't go to Shetland without a trip up to the very top of the British Isles. I woke up at lunchtime on the day after Up Helly Aa (or should that be four hours after Up Helly Aa?) to find everything covered in white including a thick layer over the windscreen. I took a few photos - Lerwick looked so pretty in the snow - and then headed slowly up the winding road out of Lerwick on my way to Unst. 


The further north I got the less snow there was and the clearer the roads were. When I drove off the ferry in Yell I headed to the right on the small road that leads round to Burravoe Pier where there's a lovely little set-up for campers and boaters. A small building, with an old lifeboat for a roof, houses very sleek kitchen, laundry and shower facilities. I had a lovely hot shower, heated my evening meal up in the microwave and filled my flask with hot water. There's an honesty box for payment but no recommended price list for showers and kitchen use. As it's £1.60 to shower at the leisure centres, I chucked a couple of quid in figuring the extra 40p would cover my boiling of the kettle and three minute use of the microwave. 

Thus cleaned and fed I continued on the narrow road up the east coast of Yell. It was dark and the snow had now reached the north. I drove very slowly through a blizzard (at least it seemed like that in my headlights) until I reached the top of the island and the ferry to Unst. There is a wider road further west, but I didn't want to backtrack to get to it. I saw nothing on the drive up apart from a few hardy sheep. I had to be careful of them as they blended into the blizzard, their wool providing the perfect camouflage.

I was the only person on the ferry to Unst. As it was dark and there are toilet facilities at the pier, I parked up and spent the night there.

Next morning it was a bit rainy, a bit gloomy, but not snowy. I drove off to do a quick visit to some of my favourite places. I had thought about doing a short walk, but the peat bog which can be soggy-going to walk on at the best times, looked completely sodden. Instead I drove around taking pics and sat staring at the grey skies and grey seas from the comfort of my driver's seat. I'd wanted to come up here to see if I liked it as much in winter as in summer as part of me would really like to live here at some point. Although it's bleak and I realised it would be difficult to get any good walking done in winter, I still liked it. I sat in the self-service cafe in the Skibhoul bakery for lunch and found two other tourists in there who also had a campervan. Theirs was a proper motorhome type, so I felt I retained my self-imposed title of the craziest person in Shetland for sleeping in the back of a van in the middle of the North Atlantic winter. 

 

Self service really means self service

In the evening I headed back to the pier to catch the ferry back to Yell and did my journey (including the shower stop) in reverse arriving back in Lerwick later that evening.

Here are some pics showing Unst in winter ... 

 The hostel in Uyeasound is a wonderful place in summer. Full of interesting people. And it has a large well-equipped kitchen and a lovely conservatory in which many a late evening has been spent drinking Valhalla beer, chatting and watching the sun finally go down and darkness spread across the water. It's closed in winter and looks really forlorn. And it's strange not see my little green tent perched on the lawn. 

Views of the rocky beach in front of the hostel

Muness Castle was built around 1598 for Laurence Bruce who was half-brother to Robert Stewart, first Earl of Orkney. It burnt down in 1627, supposedly after being attacked by French raiders. Renovations were made, but by the late 1600s it was uninhabited. The Dutch East India Company rented it in 1713 and used it as a storage facility for salvaged cargo from a nearby wreck. It has been completely uninhabited and left to ruin since 1750. It's now owned and maintained by Historic Scotland. Entry is free and the castle is always open and unmanned. Torches are provided at the entrance. 
The old cottage with stone walls is next to the castle. 

Bobby's bus shelter is named after the little boy Bobby Macauley, who at the age of six got fed up waiting for the school bus in a dishevelled and draughty bus shelter and wrote to the council to ask for a new one. The council duly obliged and Bobby got his new bus shelter. Soon, various items of furniture and ornamentation appeared. No-one knows who started it, but the bus shelter soon gained curtains, a sofa (actually an old bus seat) and a TV. Over time, the decorating of Bobby's bus shelter became more formalised and there is now an 'executive committee' (as far as I can find out it's currently his mum) who decides on a theme each year and furnishes it accordingly. The themes are often topical such as an African theme the year Bobby (no longer a little boy) moved to Swaziland, or a World Cup or Queen's Jubilee theme. I'm assuming the theme I've just seen is still last year's and is in honour of Nelson Mandela as he died at the end of the previous year. I'm quite a fan of Nelson Mandela and so was pleased to see him commemorated in this way at what is just about the opposite end of the planet from South Africa.

Probably the world's most photographed bus shelter

These photos were taken at Norwick beach - one of my favourite beaches in Unst. Even on a grey, miserable day I could have stared at it for hours. Imagine living in the white house at the end of the bay and having this view all the time? 
The little 'island' is the Isle o May (I've never managed to find out why it's called that).

Over on the west side of the island is Westing beach and I finished my day here. It was starting to rain huge icy drops and the wind was spattering them over my camera lens. After a last longing look I headed for the ferry pleased to feel I could happily survive a winter here.

A Potted History of Up Helly Aa

Ancient Roots


Up Helly Aa, as it's known today, is a relatively recent introduction to the Shetland calendar, though its origins are rooted far back in time. The torchlit procession and burning of the galley (Viking longship) stem from the ritual cremations of Norse chieftains and the ancient pagan ceremonies held to welcome the return of the sun following the winter solstice. The elaborate use of disguises seen today echo prehistoric fertility rites; even until the Middle Ages people dressed in straw costumes to encourage the gods to bless them with bountiful crops and productive animals. The feasting and all-night partying is reminiscent of the Viking drinking halls of times gone by. Norse skalds were known for their sharp wit and today this tradition is continued in the form of the 'Bill' which is displayed on the Market Cross from early morning on the day of Up Helly Aa.


A Different Calendar to the Rest of the UK


Shetland retained the Julian calendar long after the rest of the UK adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. This meant Christmas was celebrated on the modern-equivalent of January 5th, New Year on January 12th, and Uphellia which marked the end of the Yuletide festivities was celebrated 24 days after Christmas making it the 29th January. The celebrations involved fire and feasting, but not Vikings.


It's all Napoleon's Fault


The Auld Yule and Auld New Year (old Christmas and New Year) were celebrated in Lerwick with guizers (people in disguise) grouping together to visit private houses and be treated to food and drink. The festivities were lively and lasted all night. Uphellia festivities, on the other hand, are thought to have been more of a rural tradition, presumably because appeasing pagan gods in the hope of ensuring a good crop was of far more relevance to the country folk than the townsfolk. The festival only really spread to the main town of Lerwick when soldiers and sailors returning from the Napoleonic Wars brought their newly-acquired tastes for firearms and debaucherous partying with them. The adoption of Uphellia was a good excuse to let their hair down, kick their heels up and set fire to things.


This year's Up Helly Aa programme quotes the diary entry of a Methodist missionary who visited in 1824:

'the whole town was in an uproar: from twelve o'clock last night until late this night blowing of horns, beating of drums, tinkling of old kettles, firing of guns, shouting, bawling, fiddling, fifeing, drinking, fighting. This was the state of the town all the night - the street was thronged with people as any fair I ever saw in England.'

A Merging of Traditions (and calendars)


Over time the Auld Yule and Auld New Year traditions in Lerwick melded with the rural Uphellia celebrations in the beginnings of the Up Helly Aa festival we see today. By 1879 it was decided that Christmas and New Year would follow the rest of Britain and be held on the 25th December and 1st January. The Uphellia celebrations continued to adhere to the old calendar and were still held on January 29th.


Burning Barrels of Tar


Around 1840 burning tar barrels were rolled down Lerwick's narrow main street for the first time. Rum or beer casks were cut in half and filled with wood shavings mixed with coal tar (the tar being acquired as it was 'accidently' left outside the gasworks). Up to ten barrels would be fastened to a trolley and pulled, burning, through the street. This continued until the 1870s when the ideas that are still seen today started to come into play. The tar barrels had been dirty and dangerous, more so because rival groups often came to blows when they met in the street. Special constables were introduced to little effect. Despite complaints by the middle classes and interventions by the town council it seems that the tar barrelling only came to an end because the interests of the participants were changing and enthusiasm was developing in Shetland's Viking past.


And then there were Vikings


Firstly, the festival began to be known as Up Helly Aa (sometimes Up Helly A') and, rather than the 29th, the last Tuesday in January was fixed as the date. Guizing was introduced in a much more elaborate form, as was the torchlight procession. The first clear Viking themes were introduced in 1877 and in 1881 the first torchlight procession took place with 60 torches carried through the street. By the late 1880s the galley (Viking longship) had appeared. In 1906 the first Guizer Jarl (chief guizer) was appointed.


It was only after the First World War that the tradition of the Guizer Jarl having his own squad of Vikings became an annual event. Although money was tight in the 1930s the festival limped through. It was in these poverty stricken times that the 'Bill' poking fun at those in charge became the greatly anticipated proclamation it is today. The BBC filmed the festival in 1949 and it was from this year on, that the previously haphazard timings became the tightly adhered to schedule we see today. Since 1956 there has also been a Junior Jarl's squad.




For more about the modern celebrations see here for a post I've previously written.
You can find the Up Helly Aa website here.

Software for Authors

Word was getting completely unwieldy. 

In the past I've written essays, reports, letters and manuals using Microsoft Word. I even used it to write my Master's dissertation. I've always been happy with it. Then I started trying to write a book. I've never written anything this long before and it was soon getting out of hand. 

My book on the Kungsleden is gathering pace and the word count is creeping up and although this is good, I was beginning to feel very chaotic; scrolling through reams of pages whenever I needed to add or check anything was not leading to a state of authorly tranquility. I knew I needed to find a solution before I went any further.

I asked the Google gods and found that there are generally two choices of software for authors out there. I'm sure there are more, but as I have no knowledge of writing books and so don't really know what I need until I need it, I wanted to choose something mainstream and with good reviews.

Of the two software choices - Scrivener and yWriter5 - the first is pay and the second is free. I didn't particularly want to pay for something until I knew what I really needed and fortunately the freebie yWriter5 seemed to have everything I wanted and I only found good reviews. So without further ado, I decided to give it a go.

It was really easy to install and just as easy to figure out how everything works. I've copy and pasted my book from Word and been able to set each chapter up in its own folder which can then be sub-divided into different scenes. The chapters are listed in a left-hand column and by clicking on a chapter I can bring up a list of scenes. I had briefly considered setting something like this up in Word but soon realised that as every chapter would be a separate document, this would probably be even more unwieldy to use than just one long document. With yWriter5 each chapter is always easily to hand.

Once I've clicked on a chapter, I then have options for adding planning notes, character profiles, locations, goals and a description of the chapter as well as the actual content. Clicking on different lists reveals exactly how many, and in which, chapters each character and location has been mentioned.

I've been using yWriter5 for a couple of weeks now and I'm finding it very intuitive and really user-friendly. As the work on my computer becomes more organised and less chaotic I feel as though the same is happening to my brain. I'm thinking more clearly, noticing errors and repetitions, knowing where more detail is needed, fixing omissions and generally starting to feel like a real writer.

From pictures I've seen of Scrivener, it looks to be a lot fancier and to have even more functions to play around with. As with yWriter5 I've only read good reviews of Scrivener and so would like to have a test run with it to see how the two compare. For now though, I'm very happy with yWriter5 and the way it's working for me.

I'm going to Up Helly Aa!

Up Helly Aa has fascinated me ever since I started visiting Shetland and first heard about it. There are various Up Helly Aa festivals held between January and March in different parts of Shetland, but the main festival, the biggie, the Up Helly Aa to end all Up Helly Aas is held in Lerwick on the last Tuesday of January. This presented a problem for me as the last Tuesday in January is always smack-bang in the middle of term time. And it's not as though Lerwick is a place I can just nip up to for a few hours in the evening and be back in time to get a good night's sleep ready for school the next morning.


Because of this, I made a pact with myself that the first chance I get I will be there. As I'm not teaching at the moment that chance is now. I've been keeping an eye on the ferries and at this time of year there are a lot of delays and cancellations due to the weather, so I need to plan to arrive a few days in advance just in case. Imagine shelling out all that money and getting really excited just to turn up in Aberdeen the day before the festival to be told the ferry isn't leaving tonight. It's not a risk I'm prepared to take.


I'm going to go up in the van so I have a place to sleep. It's expensive taking a vehicle on the ferry and as I'll be alone I won't have anyone to split the cost with. Add to that the cost of fuel and this isn't going to be a cheap trip. But without the van I'd have to pay for accommodation and would be limited in what I could do as public transport isn't the greatest. I'd also have to add on the cost of train fares to Aberdeen and if I arrived off the train in Aberdeen to find the ferry wasn't leaving I'd be left hunting for last minute accommodation and shelling out again.


I'm wondering if I'm a little mad planning to spend a week sleeping in the back of a van on a small North Atlantic island in January. But, thanks to the Gulf Stream, Shetland doesn't get anywhere near as cold as other places on the same latitude do in winter; there's not a lot of snow and temperatures don't drop much below zero. So I'm sure I'll be fine, but I will take my duvet as well as my winter sleeping bag.


I wrote about Up Helly Aa here

I can walk 1000 miles ...

...  But I would walk 500 miles

And I would walk 500 more

Just to be that (wo)man who walked 1000 miles

Just to fall down achey and sore ...

Ok, enough of the song butchery and apologies to The Proclaimers, but seriously ... could I walk 1000 miles?


I used to get out walking every weekend. Sometimes on both days. I'd spend a lot of my holidays walking too. 1000 miles over the course of a year was easily achievable. But over the last few years, life has got in the way and my walking has got less and less. Now I rarely walk at the weekend and I've been doing less of it in my holidays (apart from my long walk in the Arctic last summer, that is).


When I walked regularly I really noticed the benefits. As well as being a generally enjoyable activity, I was fitter, less stressed and felt like I had more energy. I also felt more in tune with the time of year as I noticed the subtle changes as the seasons morphed from one to the next. It didn't matter whether I walked alone or with others, each had its additional benefits. Walking alone gave me time to think; walking with a friend or two gave me time for chit-chat and enabled us to catch up with each other's lives; walking in a group was sociable with lots of light-hearted banter. I miss all of this and really want to get this important part of my life back.


Last year Country Walking magazine challenged readers to walk 1000 miles over the course of the year. To ensure this wasn't too easy a challenge it could only include proper walks and not strolls up and down the aisles of Tesco. It doesn't have  to be done in one epic hike but can be walks fitted in at lunchtimes and at weekends. I had too much going on at the beginning of last year to even think about taking on something like this, but as a strong believer in the philosophy of 'better late than never', I'm going to challenge myself to do it this year.


For it to be a proper challenge, I need a few rules. Here are the ones I've come up with so far. I may need to adapt them or add to them as I go along.


1) I will include walks of 2 miles and above so long as it's a continuous walk and not 2 miles over the course of a whole day, in which I'm stopping and starting all the time. To monitor this I will set the time limit of 2 hours for a 2 mile walk. This may seem like a long time, but it will allow for walks in which I walk a mile to get to somewhere interesting, spend some time exploring and then walk a mile back. For walks over 6 miles I won't set a time limit so long as it is completed within the same day.


2) No bonus points for hills or tricky terrain. Clocking up the miles is the only thing that counts.


3) City walks can be included as long as they are proper walks such as circumambulating the city walls, taking part in a guided walk or following a themed trail (e.g. a Dickens' trail in London).Wandering round the shops does not count.
 
4) Pounding the treadmill in the gym doesn't count.


And, well, that's it really. Simple.


1000 miles shouldn't be difficult to achieve physically. My problems are usually with time, but having a goal to aim for will hopefully make me prioritise walking and give me some extra incentive.


Here are some maths:


1000 / 52  = 19.2 miles per week
1000 / 12 = 83.3 miles per month


On an average weekend I should be able to walk on at least one day. If I do a 10 mile walk that leaves another 9.2 miles to be walked during the week. I could try to walk 2 miles each day, or try two mid-week 5 mile walks. Of course there will be weeks when I can't do this, but as long as I achieve it most weeks, then the slack can be taken up on holidays when I'm more likely to walk every day.


I'll set up a spreadsheet to note down each walk and for extra incentive I'll include a countdown column.


I'm going to make a good start by kicking off the new year with a walk on New Year's Day. Better stop messing about on my computer and get those maps out and start plotting and planning.


You can find the link to the original challenge here.