Community / Raring to go: Bressay jarl Chris Sim brimming with enthusiasm
Our Up Helly Aa correspondent Davie Gardner meets jarl Beinir Sigmundsson ahead of the Bressay festival getting underway today (Friday)
“This means everything to me. I’m totally made up and my dreams have literally come true,” gushes this year’s Bressay Up Helly Aa Jarl Chris Sim – a Lerwick man currently living in Scalloway and an ex-Bressay resident – as he prepares to lead a weekend of Viking related revelry and fun in the island – today’s social equivalent of rampaging and pillaging.
The Bressay Up Helly Aa may be one of Shetland’s smaller Up Helly Aas with just the island’s one hall open at night, but nevertheless it still represents the biggest and most dynamic event in the island’s annual social calendar.
The first Bressay Up Helly Aa of the modern era took place in 1962 when the local minister J. Lennie Matches acted as jarl. However, the roots of Up Helly Aa in the island originally stretch back as far as 1930 when, for four years, one took place there prior to permission being withdrawn to use the local hall for the purpose.
This year, as jarl, Chris will be depicting Beinir Sigmundsson, a warrior who met a grisly end in Faroe way back in 970AD at the hands of a rival chief. Chris tells me that being a jarl has been his “only real ambition” since 1987 when, at the age of six, he was part of his first jarl squad in Lerwick with jarl Magnus Simpson.
Sadly, he never realised his own ambition to be jarl in the town’s Up Helly Aa, although he’s subsequently spent a lot of time helping out with the festival there and also been part of another two Lerwick jarl squads, plus a previous one in Bressay as well.
But now his big chance has arrived courtesy of the Bressay Up Helly Aa. To say he’s charged up and raring to go is probably an understatement. “I canna wait,” he says, clearly brimming with enthusiasm after waiting his turn for eight years as part of the committee.
Through his day-job as a postman in Lerwick, Chris is probably more used to handling Royal Mail rather than Viking chainmail, however it’s abundantly clear that he has a genuine passion for all things Up Helly Aa and Viking culture related in general.
His decidedly un-Viking like neat and tidy home in Scalloway is a veritable shrine to the subject itself, with previous squad photos, memorabilia and ornaments on display.
He tells me that preparations for his Bressay squad have been ongoing for a number of years – lockdown included. As part of this, his mother’s house in Lerwick has, for the last two years at least, effectively been turned into an Up Helly Aa workshop, with him and others making squad costumes and accessories for the 39 people (29 adults and ten children) that make up his squad. “I think she’ll be glad to see the back of wis,” he laughs.
The suits themselves comprise green kirtles and purple cloaks (both items specially made by Glasgow Textile College) with self-made black leather breastplates and black leather helmets adorned with silver metalwork.
The squad’s shields are similarly coloured to the suits, while their impressive, ornamentally inscribed axes, largely designed by Chris himself, were actually made in the Ukraine prior to the Russian invasion – Chris having located a supplier via the internet. This particular geographical connection extends further however given the fact that Chris’ partner Halyna happens to be Ukrainian too.
To maintain the Bressay connection there are visual elements relating to carvings from the historic Bressay stone included and woven into the suit too.
“It’s been a lot of work,” Chris says, adding that “the squad have probably sworn for me on many occasions but now they seem really proud the way the suit has turned out.”
Two members of the squad who are apparently as excited as Chris himself are his eldest son James and, in particular, his youngest son Hamish (7) who will not only have the honour of being dressed exactly the same as his jarl dad, but is also being afforded the opportunity to present a plaque to his school at Bell’s Brae during a visit there on the big day itself.
“He’s really excited about the whole thing, but a bit nervous about having to do the presentation,” Chris says. James, in turn, will present a plaque to the Eric Gray Centre, a facility he attends.
This year’s so called ‘burning galley’ is also eye-catchingly distinct, painted in the colours of the suits too. From its recent existence as a decaying Shetland model boat, it’s literally been transformed into a replica of the Osberg galley from Norway thanks to the creative eye and skilled hands of Lerwick man Erik Moncrieff.
This one will meet its fiery fate later tonight, but it’s actually just one of two galleys that are part of the Bressay Up Helly Aa – with another more traditional one purely for display purposes.
That one will be on official duty throughout the day and will also form the centrepiece of the evening procession before the other galley is ritualistically burned. The display one was originally built for the first festival back in 1962, but following its purely ceremonial role today it will once again be mothballed in the local galley shed until it emerges again for next year’s festival.
It’s now early Friday morning and Bressay and Chris’s big day has dawned. Despite the early hour, not to mention the social whirl of the torch steeping and bill reading and signing the night before, the squad is already in fine voice and fettle, with one of the squad songs – Elvis Presley’s Return to Sender – a nod to Chris’ more normal postman duties.
To kick the day off, the islands local café has been transformed into a Viking feasting area where the energy enhancing Up Helly Aa breakfast ritual of the ‘lining of the stomach’ takes place to prepare our marauders for the rigours of the day and weekend ahead.
Visits to Lerwick schools (including the Bressay bairns themselves and classmates of squad members), the Eric Gray Centre and other locations in both Bressay and Lerwick lie ahead, together with, of course, the torchlit procession, the galley burning and the revelry in the hall at night.
Stamina and health permitting this will be followed by another day of activities on Saturday, the usually raucous Up Helly Aa hop in the hall that evening and finally a charity head and beard shaving session in the local hotel on Sunday afternoon.
It’s clear that for Chris literally everything will constitute a highlight, but he tells me he’s particularly looking forward to the procession at night and being in the galley with youngest son Hamish surrounded by the torches, followed by the galley burning of course.
For someone who’s an Up Helly Aa enthusiast, and who has harboured an ambition to be a jarl for literally most of his life, we can only imagine what that will ultimately mean to him both today and in the future.
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