![]() When it’s all said and done, he’ll have the chance to frame and hang his underwear in The Douglas Arms pub. He will hug his daughter and wife, but neither they nor any woman will be allowed to take part in the procession. With a mythologized past on his breath and the key to the city in his hands, he and his squad will chant, “ai, ai, ai, oy, oy, oy.” He’ll sing two Up Helly Aa standards: “Ring of Fire” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” 20 times each (repeatedly during the day then once in each of the 11 halls). Summers will sit in a Viking longboat that took (male) community members six months to make and solemnly watch as it takes six minutes to burn. Tourists will snap photos, old friends will share drinks, and government officials will deliver handshakes. In the evening, the torch-lit procession will commence with a gunshot as the smell of kerosene and the sight of rogue embers aggress and enchant. The next two days will unravel as they have for 142 years. He has been a life coach, an activist (taking a stance against the use of Blackface in the festival, helping to facilitate its ban in 2020), a clothing designer, a drinking partner, a media personality, and a friend to all. Multiple generations of Up Helly Aa attendees | Photo by Paul Leaskīehind the smile is the immense organizational, imaginative, and financial heft he has thrown into making this Up Helly Aa perfect. And it lasts for 12 hours.īeing Jarl at Up Helly Aa is considered the “best day of his life” for a Lerwick man, lore confirmed by Summers’ cherubic smile. It’s a stag party run rampant, it’s a drag show, it’s a Ren Faire, it’s a middle school dance, a fire hall fundraiser, a bender in your mom’s basement. Though some halls host tourists, the merrymaking is for the locals – a time to celebrate the 364 days all volunteers have put into this year’s event.Īttending a party in the halls feels like taking acid and attending ten different festivals that clumsily got double booked. Then, it’s time for “the halls,” where sleep deprivation and drunkenness take over and the mask comes off. As the brass band strikes up “ The Norseman’s Home” and the galley burns, it’s common for the men to shed tears. The spectacle is grand and worth the travel time and money for the thousands of tourists who attend. The burning climaxes as the men circle a replica longship with ritualistic rigor. Their day starts pre-sunrise, and their behavior stays stoic through the stroke of 7:30 p.m., when the expertly-choreographed torch-lit procession begins. He is the leader of 1,000 men of varying consciousness levels participating in over 40 “squads.” Bearing torches, dressing in everything from tutus to T-Rex onesies, and performing skits at afterparties, the squads must maintain energy for at least 30 hours straight. He’s the Jarl, after all: the proverbial Viking “king” of Lerwick Up Helly Aa. 28, 2020, after 15 years of waiting, Liam Summers is above the law. At last, ax and shield in hand, he’s the Big Swinging Dick for a day – perhaps three – if the townspeople can keep up the drinking. Draped in over £7,000 of armor and accouterments, he straightens his back, puts on his red velvet cloak, downs a dram, and looks in the mirror. ![]() ![]() So instead, they safeguard, under lock and key, their God-given, gender-exclusive right to dress up as Vikings, wield torches, and sing Queen covers. The men are afraid of the wimmin, but they can’t admit it. It bends for the right people but always buoyantly returns to form–it’s exceptionally easy to disguise.īut for years, if you asked most Shetlanders, regardless of gender, such a division didn’t exist at all. It gains power in the darkness, the drinking, the dancing. Here, in the primary port town of Britain’s most northerly isles, misogyny is buried under the ground, excavated for sport, then packed back down. Shetland ponies don’t play a part, but Shetland knitwear certainly does. “Feminism” is still a dirty word in Shetland, and Reclaim The Raven has had enough.ĭepending on who you ask, the combustible gender row has any number of causes, instigators, intensifiers. It’s a demonstration decades in the works, targeted toward the men who organize and monopolize Lerwick’s annual Viking party, Up Helly Aa, a ritualized expression of Shetland’s invented cultural heritage and the largest fire festival in Europe. nears, the women of Reclaim The Raven unsheath their surprise. ![]() The night feels closer, more enveloping at 60 degrees North, and as 5 a.m. 28, 2020, an act of rebellion unfolds under the low-slung Shetland sky. ![]()
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