Wednesday 7th December 2011
Up Helly Aa among world’s top 10
The Scotsman
They stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the dancing camels of Rajasthan and the whirling dervishes of Konya. The axe-wielding, torch-hurling guizers of Lerwick now have another thing to toast with whisky and lusty Viking roars: Up Helly Aa has been named as one of the world’s top ten winter festivals.
The annual festival in the Shetland Islands, which marks the end of yule with a torch-lit procession and the ceremonial burning of a Viking longship, was one of only two European festivals among the list compiled by the British travel publication, Wanderlust.
Travellers planning a winter trip can now swither between the Shetland Islands where bearded men hurl flaming torches then dance until breakfast, and Chichicastenango, where their Guatemalan brothers twist rope around their waists then leap from a 30-metre pole in honour of the patron saint Tomas. Or even the Bikaner Camel Festival in Rajasthan in India, where the “ships of the desert” display hoofwork far nimbler than the majority of guizers in Lerwick by the end of a long night.
Up-Helly-Aa was placed fourth behind Fiesta de Santo Tomas, Chichicastenango in Guatemala, the Mevlâna Festival in Konya, Turkey, and the Festival in the Desert in Mali. It beat events like the Ice and Snow Festival in China, the Fiesta Grande in Chile and the La Tamborrada at San Sebastian in Spain.
Since it began in the 1880s, Up-Helly-Aa in the town of Lerwick has achieved worldwide recognition as Europe’s biggest fire festival, and has been augmented by a series of smaller gatherings throughout the region’s islands, with next year’s event due to take place on Tuesday, 31 January.
Does Up-Helly-Aa take your fancy?
Find out more about Scotalnd's fire festivals