Striking off-grid cabin for two with far-reaching views towards the Fife coastline, expertly designed with you and the planet in mind. For booking, see: The Hideaway and The Bothy
Guisers in the procession at Uyeasound Up Helly Aa 2015 by Mike Pennington, CC BY-SA
The Shetland fire festival of ‘Up Helly Aa’ is in late January each year. There is evidence that for many years, if not centuries, the people in rural Shetland celebrated ‘Antonmas’ or ‘Up Helly Night’, the 24th day after Christmas. Around 1870, a group of young men in the main Shetland town of Lerwick devised a series of new ideas into the proceedings. They called it ‘Up Helly Aa’, and over time the celebrations were held at the end of January. ‘Guizing’, an elaborate form of costume and disguise, and a torchlight procession were introduced into the festival. In 1877, inspired by Shetland’s long Norse heritage, ‘Viking’ elements were introduced. The ‘galley’, the Viking longship built, paraded, and then set on fire, was introduced in the late 1880s.
The archaeological and textual evidence for fiery ship burials by Vikings is minimal. One source is that of the 10th century traveler named Ibn Fahdlan, who wrote about his attendance at a shipboard cremation on the River Volga, the maritime pyre for a chieftain of the Viking Rus’ (the same Rus’ that names Russia).
Another source is at the Manchester Art Gallery in England.There you can admire ‘The Funeral of a Viking’ (1883), the work of Sir Frank Dicksee. This painting shows the launch of a boat on fire carrying the armored corpse towards the stormy, wave-swept sea.
In Dicksee’s work, a horned helmet can clearly be seen on one of the Viking warriors. We are not aware of any evidence of horned helmets on Vikings prior to Dicksee’s painting. The horned helmet had been first used as a signifier in Wagner’s Ring at Bayreuth in 1876, and Dicksee most likely would have borrowed that Viking signifier from Wagner’s work.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the horned hats and fiery galley became part of the Shetland tradition not long after Wagner and Dicksee’s respective works.
We are lucky in Scotland to have such fresh delicacies. Oysters have been the food of kings and queens, as evidenced in what has been found in the midden at Edinburgh Castle. They were used in building The Mound, the site of the splendid new-classical buildings of the Scottish National Gallery and the Scottish Royal Academy.
In the 18th century in Edinburgh, oyster cellars were coveted places where men and women, even respectable women, could mingle for prearranged soirees. This was at a time when it was frowned upon for a respectable woman to enter a tavern. Eating oysters provided a liminal lapse in the rules of breeding and a break from society’s customary formalities.
Dangers lay ahead though for the supply of oysters…
In 1741, Edinburgh Town Council complained of ‘foreigners and strangers’ dredging the Forth’s oyster scalps without permission and of committing ‘theftous practices; therefore,’very’ breed of oysters may be quite extirpate and carried off to the great and irreparable loss, both of this country and the community’. Increasingly in the 18th and throughout the 19th centuries, people would fish oysters for consumption in England and in the Low Countries. This was particularly the case for young oysters, which would be taken from the Forth and used to replenish scalps elsewhere, in places such as Kent, Essex, and the Netherlands. As well as depleting local stocks, this practice of reseeding distant scalps was not always successful. Often the young oysters could not adapt to their new environment.
Legal and illegal oyster fishing, dredging, disputes over proprietary rights of the Firth of Forth, as well as periods of colder weather that were not conducive to oyster breeding, all contributed to lower stocks of oysters. From the late 18th century, oyster yields can be guesstimated to be around 30 million oysters per year. By 1870–71, this was down to 1,356,000 oysters per year. By 1894, the last year in which records were kept, landings of oysters were a mere 1200, worth £5.
Today, the most common type of oyster being seeded in Scotland is the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas). While the native European oyster (Ostrea edulis) is also present in Scottish waters, efforts are being made to restore its populations due to its ecological importance. However, this can be at variance with the introduction of the Pacific oyster, as the Pacific variety is faster-growing, more resistant to disease, and reproduces more rapidly.
Oyster farming can create jobs in rural and coastal communities. They are a sustainable food source, and as bivalves, they can help improve water quality by filtering pollutants and nutrients from the water.
Here’s to the oyster!
For a fabulous book with a chapter on the history of oysters on the Firth of Forth in Scotland click here
People on tours often ask us: ‘What do you do in the winter when there are less private tours to deliver in Scotland?’ The answer is various things. We try to encourage more people to travel in Scotland off-season. Our general research into places, lodgings, food options, activities and visits is a major winter job but is fun too. We do our marketing and planning for the year ahead (and sometimes for the next year too) The professional and insurance aspects of running the business have always to be attended too. Family visits are most important.
If all the above are being dealt with – inbetween the above – we eat, sleep, walk, play music, and if there is a wee bit more time… we go from an outdoor sauna for a swim in the raging North Sea!
The one in the video and photograph is nearby us. The Wild Scottish Sauna is a unique sauna and sea experience located in the dunes on Kingsbarns beach between Crail and St Andrews in Fife, Scotland. It’s a beautiful wooden sauna that offers stunning views of the North Sea.