Up Helly Aa
Up to a thousand torch-bearing guizers in Viking dress march through the dark and set a full-size longship galley ablaze.
Lerwick is Shetland's only town and a genuine destination in its own right, with a harbour-front cafe culture, a working brewery, Norse heritage, and the Up Helly Aa fire festival giving it a vitality rare for a community this far north and this remote.
Cottages, B&Bs and hotels near Lerwick, Shetland.
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"A world-renowned week celebrating Britain's most northerly native sheep and the Shetland textile tradition, with knitting demonstrations, croft visits, a new hat pattern each year and events spread across the islands for 2026's Together Through Makkin theme."
Shetland Wool Week
"Said to be the most prestigious traditional accordion and fiddle event in Scotland, it builds to a world famous Grand Dance with six hours of live music from eleven dance bands."
Shetland Accordion and Fiddle Festival
"Shetland's oldest fire festival opens the islands' Viking season each January with 200 to 300 torch-bearing guizers escorting a burning longship galley through the streets of Shetland's former capital to the harbour at Port Arthur."
Scalloway Fire Festival
"Founded in 1961 by a group of friends reluctant to end their New Year celebrations, this community fire festival lights up Shetland's east Mainland each February with a torchlit galley procession and squads of guizers in hand-crafted Viking costumes."
Nesting and Girlsta Up Helly Aa
"Shetland's second-oldest fire festival, held since 1911 on Britain's most northerly island, draws over 200 guizers through the dark February night before a Viking galley is set ablaze on the shore at Uyeasound."
Uyeasound Up Helly Aa
"On Easdale Island, accessible only by foot ferry, competitors skim slates across a flooded quarry pool on the last Saturday of summer, in the world's only skimming championship held on a Scottish island with no cars and a population of around 60."
World Stone Skimming Championships
✦ Weird and Wonderful"At the stroke of midnight villagers light ten-foot tarred birch torches and parade them behind a pipe band before hurling the flames into the River Earn."
Comrie Flambeaux
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Twice a year the entire town of Jedburgh divides into Uppies and Doonies to contest a football match with no fixed rules, no referee and no pitch boundaries through the streets and closes of the town, a tradition said to derive from the use of an English soldier's head after a medieval border battle."
Jedburgh Ba' Game
✦ Weird and Wonderful"A three-day seaside spectacle in the tiny village of Seaview complete with a greasy pole over the sea, tug of war, swimming races, diving and a fireworks display over the Solent."
Seaview Village Regatta
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Competitors snorkel two lengths of a peat bog trench without conventional swimming strokes, in Britain's smallest town."
World Bog Snorkelling Championships
✦ Weird and Wonderful"An international event (which means people from Sheringham and further afield take part) on Cromer Pier, where crabbers compete to catch the greatest number and the largest specimen in two hours, with all crabs returned to the sea to wait for next year."
World Pier Crabbing Championships
✦ Weird and Wonderful