Up Helly Aa | Shetland Islands Viking Fire Festival in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[@Trollberg60north]

Nice film but urgh, please don't call it "Scotland's Viking Fire Festival". There's no love lost between Shetland and Scotland(and for good reason).

[@JandAChillTrips]

Could you give us more details about it?

[@Trollberg60north]

There was an ancient people here in Shetland but this was replaced by a wave of Norse people, language and culture from Norway around 8-900AD. We were subsequently an integral part of Norway(under Denmark) for 7-8 hundred years until a political marriage between Princess Margaret of Denmark and King James of Scotland. The King’s Lands of the lands of Hjaltland(Shetland) were given as a temporary Dowry until such time as it could be redeemed. Unfortunately, the Scottish hierarchy saw a good thing and started to claw control of Shetland. Denmark tried numerous times to redeem the Dowry but the Scots just prevaricated until Denmark had other matters to focus on and gave up. There followed centuries of horrific oppression by the Scottish Hierarchy whereby they seized and wrestled the land from the native Shetlanders. The native(Norse) population ended up as poor, impoverished tenants to Scottish Lairds who made their lives a misery. An example of their cruelty is the Shetland men had to fish for the Lairds in small, open boats up to 40 miles from land. Sadly, a number of disasters occurred where the boats and men were lost due to sudden storms. The widows not only lost husbands and sons but to add to their suffering the Lairds forced them to pay back the cost of the lost boats. If the widows did not have the money to cover this then the value of the boat had to be paid back with manual labour. Today, history is repeating itself whereby Edinburgh is starving Shetland of funding as a local authority and is selling off our seas to massive wind farm developments which will destroy the vital fishing industry(which the Scottish Government know full well will affect us). Edinburgh have also sanctioned the destruction of Shetland itself by sanctioning massive onshore wind farms. The first wind farm has already swallowed 10% of the land mass with more planned. The cuddly, romantic impression the world has of Scotland is not the reality of what Shetland suffers at the hands of Scotland.

[@JandAChillTrips]

Thank you for your insight