It’s Up Helly Aa Day in Lerwick, and I’m girding my loins, so to speak, for talking the watching world through the procession and galley burning online. 

The livestream will go ahead, no matter how bad the meteorology gets, and it WILL be bad. We may not be able to cover the Junior Up Helly Aa as all the cameras and microphones will be at risk from rain, hail, snow, wind, and plagues of frogs, and drone coverage is looking dodgy. 

But to quote the famous Up Helly Aa proclamation, “there will be no cancellation for weather.” Lynden Nicolson and his 65-strong Jarl Squad of vikings will march, Lynden at 58 the oldest Jarl (chieftain) of the festival ever. The squad includes Lynden’s sons Ryan and Logan, three nephews, two grandnephews and two grandneices and Lynden’s viking name for the day is, ahem, Knut The Great. Careful now! 

I’m very glad to see that the Jarl Squad costumes offer some insulation to the lower body this year. Around 2000 guizers, male and female will follow Lynden with their flaming torches. The longship will burn and the all-night partying begin.

That supposedly Chinese saying (“there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes”) is really about personal comfort, and assumes that the bad weather isn’t impacting things like transport, health care and food supply. All of which have been affected since Hogmanay here in Shetland.

We’ve had heavy, lying snow, deluges of rain and until Sunday, furiously high winds that kept  the ferries and freight boats that keep the islands functioning stuck in port.

And then there’s the darkness, ever so slowly lifting to the extent that I can just about see the dog ahead of me in the gloaming when I take him out at 8.00am.

Now we’re at “the lightening of the year’, and that means – literally – Up Helly Aa, last Tuesday in January as ever for the Lerwick  granddaddy of the dozen or so viking festivals that happen every year in Shetland. We’ve had two days of relatively calm weather and that’s allowed the NorthLink ships to sail, bringing adequate supplies of beer, vodka and rum to keep the festival afloat.

The Fred Olsen cruise ship Balmoral was due to dock in Lerwick, as part of a North Sea daunder up and down Scandinavia and then back to Scotland, and the addition of her 1000 passengers to the many tourists already jamming the islands’ out of season accommodation had some locals concerned. Others stocked up on fluffy stuffed puffins and hope for extra business.

But the weather has intervened. The Balmoral will not now be coming to Lerwick, as the forecast for today is abominable, first for the large lump of ocean between Shetland and Norway, and, as the day and night progress, for Lerwick itself. It’s going to be a wild one. As hundreds of paraffin-soaked torches gutter and spark, the wind will undoubtedly take the embers onto expensive nylon jackets and melt unattractive holes therein. There are no tickets left for the halls, the all-night party venues where the squads of guizers (men and women for the second year running) will perform satirical and sometimes salacious skits, dance, drink, flirt and eat. There will be bannocks and reestit mutton soup. It is the biggest night of the year in the isles and there is a public holiday on Wednesday for the headaches to ease. Oh, and the ferries and freight boats that connect Shetland to Aberdeen have been cancelled for tonight and probably for the rest of the week. It’s a lock-in!

If you want to watch and listen to the procession and the spectacular burning of the viking longship which has been painstakingly built over the past year, you can do so on various online sites. Main ones are the Promote Shetland Facebook page, NorthLink Ferries’ Facebook page and Promote Shetland’s YouTube channel. I’ll be commentating, as I have for the past decade or so. And in the comfort of your own home you can avoid the vicissitudes of the weather. Make some soup and bannocks (if you can’t find reest, make do with smoked lamb) take a wee dram, watch and listen, and shiver in empathetic schadenfreude, if there is such a thing. Coverage of the main event kicks off around 7.00pm with the procession starting at 7.30pm, and your comments will be welcome.

By the way, if you fancy visiting our beloved isles, possibly when the weather is less inclement, head over to uphellyaa.com for details of how you could win a return trip to Shetland for four. And remember there are actually around a dozen ‘country’ Up Helly Aas, some of them almost as spectacular as the Lerwick festival…especially Northmavine (where I live!). Skol!