HORNS OR WINGS ....

Today in Shetland sees the start of the annual Up Helly Aa season, with the Scalloway Fire Festival getting underway tonight. Scalloway is the first of 10 Fire Festivals celebrated throughout the Isles, from mid-January through to the end of March. The main Up Helly Aa held in Lerwick on the last Tuesday in January is the largest Fire Festival in Europe and the most well known of them all.

The Lerwick Festival is also the oldest dating back to the late 1800's, and evolved from traditional torch-lit processions around the town at Christmas and New Year. The Viking element of the Festival emerged later and has now become a prominent feature of all the Fire Festivals. The Viking costumes are all made by the participants themselves and a very closely guarded secret. Speculation is rife throughout the Isles as each Up Helly Aa Day dawns as to whether the Jarl Squad, as it is known, will be sporting helmets with horns, wings, or what has now become quite common and more authentic, neither of them.

Leonard Raven-Hill (1867-1942) cartoon shows the problem sometimes encountered when trying to procure horns.

Transcript below:

CURIO DEALER: "There's a nice pair o' horns, on'y a couple of pounds."

CALEDONIAN: "They're awfu' dear."

DEALER: "Of course they're orf a deer. Wot d'yer 'spose they're orf! A rabbit?"

EXOTIC TRAVEL

Travel to distant and often exotic locations were a luxury few could afford in the early 1920's and 1930's but, as before, cartoonists brought out the excitement of such travel, highlighting the possible thrills and exhilaration of such a trip. Leonard Raven-Hill's (1867-1942) cartoon from the late 1920's illustrates such a scene.

Transcript below:

COLD COMFORT

VISITOR TO THE WEST INDIES: (who has been warned against bathing in the river because of the alligators, but has been told by the boatman that there are none at the river's mouth). "By Jove, this is ripping! But, I say, how do you know there are no alligators here?"

BOATMAN: "Well, you see, Sah, de alligator am so turr'ble feared ob de shark!"