Ruby
One of the most important dates in the Shetland calendar falls on the last Tuesday of January each year.
It’s time for Lerwick’s Up Helly Aa, the date when the darkness of winter is finally banished, a celebration of the return of the light.
And it takes the form of the biggest, craziest Viking-themed fire festival on the planet.
“So, what precisely are the roots of Up Helly Aa?” I ask, as Jamie drives me and Hanna into Lerwick. “Does it really go all the way back to the Vikings?”
“Not exactly,” he replies, carefully squeezing the car through the busy streets.
Several have been closed off for the procession, and there’s not a parking space to be seen in the rest. Fortunately, we have permission to leave the car at Isobel’s cousin’s house, not far from the park in the middle of town where the main events take place.
“It does represent Shetland’s proud Viking roots, but the festival as it is now started in Victorian times.
It’s become an important way of bringing the community together through the long winter months, so that the different squads can plan their outfits and rehearse their acts.
The culmination is what you’re about to see tonight—a final vanquishing of the darkness of winter.
Many people swear they notice a difference the morning after, as if the rituals and the torches and the sheer bloody daftness of it all really do have the power to bring back the light. ”
Hanna’s already explained the squads to me.
The Jarl Squad is the focal point of the festival, comprising around fifty Vikings, who will pull a replica of a Viking longship through the streets of Lerwick to the park, led by the Guizer Jarl, who’s the squad’s chief.
They’ll be accompanied by dozens of other squads, each group of guizers, as they’re known, choosing a different theme—which can be anything they like—and dressing accordingly.
The whole day is taken up with their preparations and, as Hanna puts it, “Drink will have been taken.” Oh, and the whole thing is lit by the flaming torches they’ll be carrying.
And when they get to the park, they’ll set fire to the galley and let it blaze.
“So the procession will involve hundreds of men in fancy dress, whose nutritional intake for the day has mostly been in liquid form, and they’ll be wielding huge fiery torches?” I said. “Well, count me in! This I have to see.”
There certainly are some sights to be seen in the town.
We glimpse the flag flying above the town hall, the usual blue and white Nordic cross of Shetland having been replaced by a Viking double-headed black raven on a blood-red ground.
And as we pull into the driveway of Isobel’s cousin’s house, a pair of men in full gorilla suits saunter by, closely followed by a quartet of glam rockers wearing wigs and face paint, their silver jumpsuits gleaming in the glow of the streetlights.
The excitement among the crowds making their way toward viewpoints along the route of the procession is almost palpable.
I’m quite relieved to see an army of fire engines parked to one side, presumably just in case the burning galley gets out of hand.
Geordie’s in the Jarl Squad this year, so he’ll be marching in the procession.
He’s there when we enter the house, magnificent in his Viking costume, a labor of love he’s been working on through the past months, crafted from leather, brass, and fleece.
Shetland hospitality is legendary and, although I’m a stranger to most of the assembled company, when he introduces me to the others, I’m offered a dram of whisky and told to help myself from the spread on the kitchen table.
“Are you looking forward to going to the hall later, Ruby?” Isobel asks.
She’s invited me to join her and the rest of her extended family in one of the halls for the post-procession proceedings, which involve food and drink all night long, as the different squads of guizers do the rounds, performing their skits in each of the venues across town.
It’s been arranged that Jamie will drive Hanna home once the procession is over, and I’ll go back with Isobel in the wee small hours of the morning.
“Can’t wait!” I say. “I made sure I had a nap this afternoon, so I’m ready for anything.”
It’s a surreal moment when Geordie offers me a sausage roll from the plate he’s taking round.
I’ve never been offered buffet items by a Viking before, but there’s a first time for everything.
Then he glances at his watch (concealed beneath a studded leather cuff, for the sake of authenticity), and says, “Well, now I’d better be getting off to join the rest of the squad. See you later, in the hall.”
We pull on our jackets and go outside. The front garden of the house is on a raised bank overlooking the park, so we’re in pole position as the events of the evening begin.
Across from where we stand, at the top of the town, the squads gather.
The streets are crammed full of spectators now, the night air filled with the babble of thousands of voices.
But silence falls when, suddenly, the streetlights go out, plunging the town into darkness.
A lone beam illuminates the Viking flag as it unfurls with powerful languor above the town hall.
Then a single flare hisses into the sky above it, and a cheer goes up as the torches are lit, the flicker of flames spreading quickly from one bearer to the next along the length of the procession.
We hear a distant band strike up, pipes and drums accompanying the Jarl Squad as they pull the galley forward between the ranks of the other guizers.
And then the darkened streets are lit by a thousand blazing torches, snaking through the town toward us, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up with the sheer spectacle of it all.
As they draw near, the air around us fills with the smell of paraffin and the heat from the flames.
I stand, transfixed, as the Viking longship appears in the park and the others pour in behind it until the whole heart of the town is ablaze with torchlight.
Finally, at a sign from the Guizer Jarl, the first torches are thrown onto the galley.
It seems to withstand the onslaught at first, but as the ranks of guizers step forward to launch their torches onto its deck, it becomes consumed in a fiery maelstrom, blazing defiantly against the darkness, amid cheers and whoops from the watching crowds.
“What do you think?” asks Jamie, who stands alongside me.
“I think it’s the craziest, most brilliant sight I’ve ever seen,” I say, transfixed as showers of sparks fly heavenward.
He turns away to say something to Hanna, when suddenly I catch sight of a face in the crowd across the street from where we stand.
Everyone else is looking toward the burning galley, but one person has turned our way.
In the flickering firelight, I recognize Donald Kilgour.
His eyes are shadows, but I can tell he’s looking straight at us.
There’s something in the way he stands there, turning his back on the spectacle to watch Hanna, that makes my skin crawl. Since I found that lawyer’s letter the other day and did my own research, I now understand the full extent of his bullying ways.
The burning ship collapses in a final explosion of sparks, distracting me for a moment, and when I look again, Donald Kilgour has disappeared into the crowd.
But I feel a growing sense of uneasiness.
Suddenly, something he said when we had dinner together flashes into my head: You’d have to burn the place down to get her to move.
A terrifying image dawns on me. Try as I may to reason it away, I can’t get it out of my head.
I turn to Jamie. “Can we go home now?” I say, the urgency in my voice betraying my panic.
He looks at me with surprise. “You don’t want to go to the hall with the others, then, for the rest of the party?”
“No, I’ve changed my mind. I’m too tired, and these crowds are a bit much. I think I’ll come back with you and Hanna after all.”
“Okay. Let’s head off, then, if you’re sure you’ve seen enough.”
Sitting in the back of the Land Rover, I’m silent on the drive to Igdrasil while Hanna and Jamie chat about the events of the evening.
He drops us at the farmhouse door, and I don’t think the pair of them notice the figure on the coast path, a shadow against the moonlit sea, who turns and disappears when we pull up.
Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps I was just imagining it. But I still believe we got back just in time.
I’m not sure what lengths Donald Kilgour might go to in order to drive Hanna out.
But I couldn’t get the thought out of my head once it had snuck in there—an image of Hanna’s home burning.
Not her house in Narvik, but the farmhouse at Igdrasil.
And as those flames had finally consumed the Viking galley in the park, I’d been determined that one blaze on the islands that night, absorbing the attention of every firefighter, was enough.