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It was at exactly 7.30pm on an exceptionally calm and dry night that Lerwick's fire festival Up-Helly-Aa, celebrating the islands' Viking heritage, was getting close its climax.

The signal for the lighting of the torches was given and soon Lerwick's streets were lit by the magnificent light of over 850 torches. The procession for the famous fire festival of the North was led by Guizer Jarl Sigurd Hlodvisson on his galley, the `Ásmundervag.

Around 5,000 people turned up to watch the 1999 Up-Helly Aa galley to go up in flames. As the inferno destroyed four months' of painstaking work by the galley builders, the crowd sung 'The Norseman's Home'.

This year's Jarl (Davie Mathewson, a 36-years old single man from Gilbertson Road, Lerwick), depicted Sigurd Hlodvisson - Sigurd the Stout, Earl of Orkney who lived from 980 until 1014 when he died on the battlefield at Clontarf, Ireland. `I think he was quite a character,´ Jarl Mathewson said.

According to the Orkneyinga sage, Sigurd was a great chieftain who ruled over several dominions, including the Isle of Man. He was powerful enough to defend Caithness against the Scots and went on Summer expeditions, plundering the Hebrides, Scotland and Ireland.

After the burning, the party continues, as 48 squads, consisting of exactly 902 guizers, all disguised with a particular theme in mind, visit eleven halls in rotation.

At every hall each squad performs its 'act', perhaps a skit on local events, a dance display in spectacular costume, or a topical send-up of a popular TV show or pop group.

Every guizer has a duty (as the 'Up Helly A' Song' says) to dance with at least one of the ladies in the hall, before taking yet another dram.

The 'evening' usually finishes at around 8am in the morning. Needless to say, the day after Up-Helly-Aa is a holiday in Lerwick !