SQUADS of heavily-disguised men brandishing burning torches will snuff out months of hard work tonight when they torch a lovingly-crafted Viking longboat.
The dragon-headed ship’s fate in the Lerwick Up-Helly-Aa festival is always sealed as the sacrificial centrepiece.
Thousands of revellers will turn out to see the galley paraded through Shetland’s capital before she succumbs to 1,000 paraffin-soaked flaming shafts of wood.
Yesterday she sat proud and pristine in the inner sanctum of Up-Helly-Aa, the Galley Shed in St Sunniva Street, while the finishing touches were made by a team of craftsmen, working to the specifications of festival figurehead Guizer Jarl Rae Simpson.
The 37-year-old joiner by trade, who now works as a firefighter, could not be better placed to commission a wooden boat that will be burned to a crisp.
“It’s going to be an emotional moment seeing my galley go up in flames,” said the father-of-two.
The style and dimensions of the boat – 30ft long, 6ft at its widest, 20ft to the top of the mast and 11ft to the dragon’s head – have not changed in 60 years.
However, the guizer jarl chooses his own colour scheme. Mr Simpson has opted for red and white stripes for his ship, which has been under construction since October.
Galley foreman Lyall Gair was busy yesterday as the mast was raised, and 22 oars and 22 shields were fixed in place.
For the 30-year-old joiner, who stays at Quarff, it is his fifth year in charge of building the vessel having first got involved in Up-Helly-Aa as a young boy, attending the Galley Shed with his father.
Yesterday, he seemed unperturbed by the prospect of his team’s hard work being reduced to ashes.
“This is what we’ve been working towards since October and it’s a huge job so there’s never any time to stop and think about how it’s going to end,” he said.
“I don’t really stop working until the jarl climbs on board ready to torch her, then I’ll take a few minutes to think about the job we’ve done.”
One of the final jobs yesterday was to attach a two-pronged tongue in the dragon’s mouth and trim its silky white beard.
Mr Gair and his team of 16 galley boys will today attach a rope to the boat – built from pine, parana pine and white wood – and haul her through Lerwick to her resting place.
Yesterday, the 1,000 torches that will do the damage were stacked at Lerwick’s Islesburgh Community Centre in King Harald Street.
Each torch is wrapped in six hessian sacks and steeped in paraffin for two hours.
Some 200 smaller torches for the junior members taking part this evening were also being prepared.
Jarl Mr Simpson and his squad of 44 men and 16 boys, the youngest of which is five-year-old Nathan Grains from Vidlin, will set off from the Lerwick Royal British Legion at around 9.45am today.
Dressed in their full Viking regalia, they will march through the streets, visiting schools, shops, hospitals and care homes.
Shortly after 7pm, the jarl squad and around 1,000 other guizers, who will march behind them and their galley on the torchlight procession, will start to muster for the celebrations on the Hillhead.
At 7.30pm, street lights will be dimmed and the torches lit as the ship is paraded to the King George V Playing Field.
On arrival at the burning site, the marchers will toss their torches on to the boat before setting off for the mother of all parties which continues until dawn at various halls across Lerwick.