Shetland Isles Fire Festival
Up helly aa! was born in the 1870's and is held each year on the last Tuesday of January when a group of local young men decided to put new ideas into Shetland's wild Christmas celebrations: the torchlight procession, the Viking longship burning, the Viking costumes, and the postponing of the celebrations until the end of January were all gradually added to the festival gradually until it became the Viking and fire festival as we know it today. Up helly aa! has grown to become Shetland's greatest festival, with thousands of islanders and tourists celebrating Shetland's cultural heritage. Up helly aa! is about dressing as a Viking, burning a Viking longship, and having a long night of wild behaving in the streets of the town of Lerwick. It is only 24 hours of fun, but it takes several thousand people and 364 days to organise. Much of the planning is done in strictest secrecy. The biggest secret of all is what the master of ceremonies, the Guizer Jarl, will wear and which character from the Norse Sagas he will represent. After the burning and the singing of the traditional Up Helly-Aa songs the Squads disperse to begin their rounds of the Lerwick halls and dance venues, many of which are open until about 8 AM the following morning. The almost one-thousand strong Viking crowd are divided into forty Squads which have to visit all the venues in a pre-arranged rotation, entertaining the guests and performing a short sketch or dance display in every venue. Music and fun are set to last all night for the fierce Vikings who have a duty to survive the intense and wild partying until the next morning which, not surprisingly, is a public Up helly aa!
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