Originally published in The Shetland Times. The strange saga of Virdablutt: The lost origins of Up Helly A’?

A winter of Up Helly As, in all its manifestations, is almost  upon us. Perhaps it is time for me to reveal some of my researches into the strange community of Virdablutt, and the evidence, such as it is, that the origins of Up Helly A’ may lie not in the romantic, teetotal politics of soldiers returning from the First World War, or even in Lerwick tar barreling, but in something much older. And darker.

There was another festival of fire, a lost burning, and it took place in a  remote and now depopulated part of the western mainland of Shetland. If you go to Virdablutt now, and it’s hard to get to, with only an unmaintained track over some sizable hills and across a tidal causeway,  there is little to see but the remains of two or three ruined and roofless crofthouses, one prettily sited in a lovely bay, with a shingle beach stretched in a crescent before it, facing out west to the Atlantic. A beautiful place to watch the sunset. It’s the kind of house you would imagine might have been restored, even as just a holiday home. But no-one has. Not even the salmon and mussel  farmers have descended on this…I was going to say unspoilt spot. But unspoilt is perhaps not quite the right word.

Virdablutt was all about fishing, the far haaf, where groups of men would row six-oared, square sailed boats, sixareens, far out 40 miles to sea in search of fish, especially ling. It thrived for many years, it seemed. And then it failed, as many of Shetland’s fishing communities did, dependent as they were on a risky and fragile form of economy.

The late 18th century kirk lacks a roof  now and is crumbling, but is famous for the carvings on ancient, heavily worked stones in its sheltered eastern wall which indicate that it was built on something much older. The Virdablutt carvings are the reason a number of tourists make the difficult trek there every year, partly for the ‘sheela nan gigs’, the only examples in the isles of these giant female fertility symbols, perhaps best known for their unembarrassed presence at Rodel in Harris in the Western Isles. These are hugely important, the only examples of these sexualised female caricatures in the isles. But it’s the other carving that interests me more. It shows something which indicates Up Helly Aa’s origins could lie not in the drunken antics of  rowdy Lerwick tradesmen, or even in the simple illumination of winter-darkened townships, but in the desolation of Virdablutt. In a stranger, more sinister ceremony. 

My attempts to research Virdablutt  at the excellent Shetland Museum and Archives proved frustrating. There are, strangely, few references to what had been after all, at one point an entire  parish of Shetland, and, with the fishing, an important one. It had been nominally under the ownership of the Busta estate but a succession of landlords seem to have largely ignored it, taking their minimal crofting rents and presumably the usual punitive share of the fishing income, and doing little if anything in return. There are some references to World War One and the forced removal of the population for military reasons, but no references to what actually happened there. 

Church of Scotland Presbytery records did indicate, however, that the kirk as such – had been closed “due to evacuation” in 1914, and there are various red-faced references to the sexual archaeology and “symbols pertaining to fishing rituals, aimed at securing the beneficence of nature”. On my own single  trip to Virdablutt I found, where in a higher form of church there would have been an altar, a broken stone cross, with some withered flowers placed next to it. Protected from sheep, wind and rain  by one of those glass domes you see in cemeteries. Next to gravestones. Oddly, there are no grave markers in the remains of Virdablutt.

It took a search through the  Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, the Church of Scotland’s vast  and sometimes damning history of each and every minister who has been called to it, to reveal something of what had happened at Virdablutt. And even then, the ministers who served Northmavine, from the 16th century on, did not spend much time visiting the place, based as they were in the much more thriving and rewarding community of Hillswick, over the pass, across the causeway, and many miles south of the westward track’s beginning at Collafirth.

There were references, though, to ‘rumours of exceedingly sinful and dark activities’ concerning the Virdablutt folk, – about 350 of them according to one census from 1762. And there was a Rev Peter Christopher Oswaldson from the early 1820s who left his charge in Northmavine for a presumably less demanding one in Fife, but not without a final sermon “noted by many for its condemnatory tone as to the infamous boat burning rituals of Virdablutt.” Further back, one minister referred to ‘The Virdablutt conflagration’ and how he had banned any of his congregation from attendance or observation. “To no avail, as they are steeped in the damnable consequences of their superstition.”

This ritual, clearly much much older than any of the modern Up Helly Aas, is illustrated in the carving on the kirk’s eastern wall: A boat, crudely rendered, with what appear to be flames surrounding it. The boat is resting on a prone, plainly human figure. 

My researches took me, eventually to Professor Sigurd Hakonsson at the University of Oslo. In Edinburgh for a conference, I spent a fascinating afternoon with him. He was familiar with Virdablutt, and indeed had visited during one of his many trips to Shetland. The prefix ‘Vi’ was significant, he said, in viking archaeology, meaning the place of a shrine. And then he told me about the viking concept of blot, or blood sacrifice. Usually aimed at appeasing the gods, notably Odin, these rituals saw animals killed and often burnt. As the raiding and exploration parties began to move westward, these sacrifices became functional aspects of setting out to sea, and were part of a blessing for the boat carrying them on their latest adventure.

“The blot, according to our excavations from Norway and Denmark as far as Newfoundland and mainland Canada, developed and became quite specific” Professor Hakonsson told me. “The availability of conquered or enslaved communities meant several people could be slaughtered in its name for the gods. But thought to be more effective was the death of a young woman.”

I was dumbfounded. If this was so, it meant that the colourful and largely innocent tradition of Up Helly Aa was based on human, and indeed female sacrifice. But then the professor said something which shocked me even more.

“Our researchers in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland discovered that some, but not all of the fishing communities there practised a symbolic form of ‘blot’ until comparatively recently. Just before World War Two, in fact, when it appears to have been stopped by the authorities. As I say, symbolic of course; these things are always about symbols. But the burning of an old fishing boat with a kind of puppet or life size doll beneath it on the fire was common. And there was a young girl elected, every year to be the queen of the festival.  The Blood Queen, they called her, apparently.” 

The Professor had to leave. We parted on good terms, but not before he shook my hand and said,  oddly enough, that of course there was no archaeological evidence that Virdablutt had ever been the site of such blood sacrifices. ‘Symbolic,’ he said, ‘or otherwise.’ And he added: ‘Take care. The idea of the blood sacrifice is a very potent one.’ I felt there was much he had failed to tell me.

 I travelled home, my mind reeling… Why was the ‘blot’ and its fairly recent symbolic manifestation not more commonly known? The Professor’s research was, strangely, not easily accessible on the internet – it was behind a paywall at the University of Oslo, and an expensive, Scandinavian one.

It was two weeks later that the package arrived. Postmarked Edinburgh, but anonymous. Inside were several sheets of paper clearly scanned using a smartphone. Part of it was a report, redacted as we’ve learned to call it, with passages and names blacked out. But it was headed: ‘Evacuation and resettlement of Virdablutt community, Zetland, 1914” and it had come from within what was then the War Office.

Only 100 people had been left in Virdablutt by 1914. The haaf fishing was fading, steam drifters were beginning the process of industrial catching with which we are all familiar. Men were in the process of being called up for military service. One paragraph stood out:

“It has been decided that, following longstanding reports of irregular social activity including practices deemed sacrilegious, and the complaint of one mother about the kidnapping and unexplained disappearance of her daughter” – and here the name had been erased – “ the best if drastic solution is the removal of the entire population of the communtiy known as Virdablutt, and the imprisonment under wartime strictures of these male persons.” A list of names, again redacted.

The other piece of paper was a paragraph torn from a newspaper, placed on an A4 sheet, photographed and printed. It referred to the trial of one Cowan Ernest Sipsmith, trawler skipper, in 1919 at St John’s, Newfoundland, on charges of child kidnapping, murder and ‘engagement in acitivities of extremely barbarity likely to cultivate superstition and terrorisation within the community of Viblod.’ Viblod. I looked it up. On the extreme western tip of Newfoundland, a deserted village near the curiously named bay called Salvage once known for its thriving economy, entirely based on fishing.

Nothing about Virdablutt. On the other side of the Atlantic. Nothing but 2000 miles of clear water between the two communities with almost the same name.

Up Helly Aa lives and grows and is largely, these days, portrayed as a series of  inclusive community festivals. Eventually, one assumes, even the main Lerwick event will crack open and admit women. There will be grumbling and some heckling and abuse, but Shetland is essentially a welcoming place where equality is treasured and many women take leading and warmly appreciated roles in the community. 

I watch old videos of the galley burnings, now, on the internet,  and I feel…anxious. Circles of men and, outside of Lerwick, women, each bearing a flaming torch, marching sunwise, always sunwise, never widdershins around the blaze. Sending some invisible viking to Valhalla in flames. The Guizer Jarl is always safely removed from the galley just before it is set on fire.

Another package arrived yesterday. A Canadian postmark. A large padded envelope and inside a plain cardboard box which held, wrapped in tissue paper, what was, even to my unpractised eye, a Barbie Doll. A vintage model, I later discovered. Her chrome viking helmet and chainmail glittered. Her plastic axe, however, was broken.

The label on the box, professionally printed, said: ‘An Up Helly Aa Souvenir, hand-made in Shetland’. And then two words, ‘good luck.’

I sold her on eBay for £167, to a collector of such things, somewhere in Australia. I have never returned to Virdablutt. It is, after all an extremely inaccessible place, and even the track  leading west from Collafirth is very hard to find.