Up Helly Aa – Lerwick Viking Festival

Up Helly Aa is a large-scale Viking-themed fire festival held in Lerwick, Shetland, to mark the end of the Yule (the local midwinter holiday season) and celebrate the islands' Norse heritage. This is a community-driven event where hundreds of local volunteers, known as Guizers, spend the entire year preparing hand-crafted Viking-era costumes and building a traditional Viking longship. The festival is a display of local craftsmanship and tradition, centered around the figure of the "Guizer Jarl," who leads his elite Jarl Squad in intricate, authentic Norse attire.

The main attraction for visitors is the torchlight procession, where nearly a thousand of these costumed Guizers march through the darkened streets of Lerwick. While the Viking Jarl Squad leads the way, the other 45 to 50 squads are a massive part of the spectacle; they are numerous and highly diverse, often opting for "crazy and funny" themes that contrast with the Viking seriousness. The visual climax occurs when all these squads circle the replica longship and hurl their burning torches into the vessel, creating a massive bonfire. Beyond the fire, the festival is defined by this unique culture where each of these 45-50 squads rotates between local halls throughout the night to perform individual skits and dances, maintaining a tradition of satire and social commentary that has lasted for over a century.

The festival's chronology begins on the morning of the last Tuesday in January with the Jarl Squad parade, where the Guizers proudly escort the newly built longship through the streets of Lerwick, marking its first public appearance. As night falls, the street lights are extinguished for the evening procession, culminating in the dramatic burning of the galley. Once the fire dies down, the celebration shifts to these local hall parties that last until dawn, with the following Wednesday being a public holiday in Lerwick to allow the community to recover from the festivities.

Good to know before going there
Public access to the morning Jarl Squad parade and the dramatic evening torchlight procession is entirely free and requires no tickets.
However, to join the all-night hall celebrations, you must procure tickets directly from the local community.
Since the hall tickets usually sell out in a matter of days, the most reliable way to secure yours is to check the tickets section of their official website starting in November. Other ways involve contacting locals directly through e-mail or social media and asking to be included on a waiting list.