The Shetland Islands hold the New Year’s Eve celebration known as Up Helly Aa, centered in Lerwick and traditionally involving a torchlit procession.
Up Helly Aa is most strongly associated with the last Tuesday in January rather than December 31, so it is not technically a New Year’s Eve festival. The question distinguishes the Shetland location from Hogmanay, Scotland’s actual New Year celebration. Lerwick’s New Year’s Eve events are held in the island community, including public festivities connected with Victoria Park.
Shetland lies north of mainland Scotland and has a distinctive Norse-influenced cultural history. Up Helly Aa’s famous procession features participants in Viking-style costumes carrying torches before a replica galley is burned. That ceremony developed in the nineteenth century and is a separate tradition from the midnight customs of Hogmanay.
The comparison is useful because visitors sometimes combine the two events in descriptions of Scottish winter festivals. Shetland has its own New Year traditions, while Up Helly Aa occurs weeks later and is not a December 31 countdown.