By David Moir

Vikings, they’re not what they used to be.

No more do we see horn helmeted warriors pillaging and plundering everything in sight, striking fear into villagers with the stories of their wickedness. No, now they sing and dance when visiting community centers, hospitals and shopping centers. Basically cheering everyone up who sing along and join in the fun on a cold wet Tuesday in January.

I have just returned from covering the Up Helly Aa festival in Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands, Britain’s most northerly set of islands. More than 100 miles north of the Scottish mainland and closer to Bergen in Norway than London.

Shetland prides itself on its Norse heritage and its Vikings, especially for Up Helly Aa with the Guizer Jarl (the Chief Guizer), and leader of the Jarl Squad (there are another 45 squads) who are the Vikings for this special day designing and making their suits, shields and weapons for the occasion two years in advance.

On the morning of Up Helly Aa, myself and two other photographer colleagues managed to find out where the Jarl Squad would be starting their day, a local community center in the heart of Lerwick.
We were allowed in to photograph them. I thought would they be huddled round drinking beer and telling stories of their pillaging escapades like their Viking forefathers.

Actually no they weren’t, they were gathered in the centre drinking hot tea and coffee, eating a bacon roll, reading this year’s program of events and shining up the metal on their suits and shields. This year’s Guizer Jarl, local fisherman Stevie Grant, even had his helmet given a last minute polish before he stepped outside to lead his band of warriors through the day’s activities.

At night, it was the torch-lit procession and the burning of the longboat in one of the local parks. The weather in January in Shetland is, shall we say changeable, at best.

In the late morning it was lovely blue sky and periods of sunshine, but for the torch-lit procession, it was heavy cold rain driving straight in your face and straight down your lens, accompanied by a force 10 gale (later that night 90mph winds were recorded!). Everything was soaking wet; me, my cameras (one packed it in due to the water) and lenses.

At 7.30pm on the dot, when all the Vikings were lined up in the street and ready to go, flares were lit and the petrol dipped torches were lit. Off we went.

Rule number 1, don’t get in the way of Shetland Vikings carrying lit torches. Get as close as you can, try and get the picture and move on. Many years ago I saw a photographer basically be lifted up and put over a barrier in with the public – game over for him.

After walking a zig zag of the streets the procession eventually ended up in the public park where the longboat was placed.

You’re not allowed into the park unless you have a special pass, and not many are given out nowadays. It’s local media only so you have to find a wall to stand on to see over the crowds.

After the usual “three cheers” hundreds of lit torches are thrown into the galley, and “whoosh” up it goes. It doesn’t take long until all you see is the dragon head engulfed with silhouettes of the helmeted warriors standing in front of the flames.

With that the Vikings and their helpers, locals and tourists head off into the night to start drinking and partying hard till the early morning in the local halls, pubs and hotels.

Me, I squelched back to my hotel to file my pictures and dry out my equipment and clothes – can’t wait to go back again.

By David Moir

Scotch whisky is big business. With sales well over 5 billion pounds per year it’s an industry that has gripped the growing middle classes around the world. Including in countries where sales previously struggled and with drinks industry companies eager to quench that thirst with huge modern computer run distilleries being built around the globe producing more and more of the liquid.
But one thing still remains true in its production, oak casks.

Whisky isn’t Scotch Whisky unless it has been distilled in Scotland and matured for a minimum of three years in an oak cask which comes in various capacities from a Pin to a Butt. ‘Cooper’s’ are the tradesmen who build and repair the oak casks and barrels, their skills passed down from generations show no signs of entering the hi-tech world. They use tools such as a dowelling stock, flagging iron, inside shave and a hollowing knife to name a few.

I visited the Speyside Cooperage which started as a family business in 1947, in the small village of Craigellachie in northern Scotland, or the Malt Whisky Trail as it is also lovingly known. There they repair and build up to 150,000 oak casks a year, with each ‘cooper’ still being paid per cask, working on 20-30 per day like it always has been. The hardest workers can earn up to 60,000 pounds.

It’s a very, very busy working environment, there is no room for small talk or lazing about. ‘Cooper’s’ earn their crust from the moment they roll a cask to workspace, begin taking it apart, hammering the lid, metal hoops and inspecting the wooden staves, making any repairs and then putting it back together again. It’s pretty much “perpetual motion”, a phrase used by Andrew Russell, the general manager of the cooperage.

Outside the cooperage main building are rows and rows (or stow’s) of oak casks and barrels delivered from around the world. Stacked high up in the air with the different distillery names stamped on their lids, it’s a formidable sight.

There’s a whole section of bourbon barrels from the U.S. with Jack Daniels and Jim Beam to name just two, sherry and port barrels from Spain and South America – it’s like a holiday brochure of countries you would like to visit and shows how a local company in the north of Scotland with its loyal tradesmen and hardwork ethics are still making a hugely important impact on the global market.

From the water in the hills, to the copper still in a distillery, to the oak cask for up to fifty years, poured into a glass then finally to the mouth for the taste sensations to start – it’s perpetual motion and I couldn’t put it any better myself.

Slainte!

The post-apocalyptic horror novel, ‘World War Z’, by Max Brooks, has been adapted into a film starring Brad Pitt and Mireille Enos and directed by Marc Forster. It has started filming in Scotland. The set is mainly on the streets in and around George Square in Glasgow, with its open space and architecture, substituting for Philadelphia.

Road signs have been put up telling you 16th Street, J F Kennedy Boulevard and Ben Franklin Bridge are just around the corner so hopefully you feel like you are in Philly, certainly some of the tourists from the U.S. I’ve spoken to seem to give it the thumbs up.

The Brangelina bandwagon (or train as it should now be known) chartered an entire train for the journey north from London over the border to Glasgow for themselves, their children and cast and crew of the film. They arrived last week in a flurry of media attention (TV crews positioned, journalists lurking and photographers roaming) and blacked out people carriers and limousines sitting near by but with security so tight you couldn’t see a thing.

With that in mind, myself and colleagues all thought the access to the actual filming was going to be super tight, how wrong could we be?

With both Pitt and Angelina in the country, I thought it was going to be stepladders and long lenses every day. But with Angelina and the kids tucked away in a luxury estate south of Glasgow (its on private land so lets leave that to the paparazzi), it was hopefully Brad in the city center for me.

The film crew had put up large barriers to keep out onlookers and probably the peering lenses of photographers but with my trusty 6 step ladders, I could easily see over. It was game on. The first couple of days were uneventful with the same scene of a policeman smashing the wing mirror off Pitt’s car the highlight. I was beginning to think this was going to be a bit boring. Having other assignments on over the weekend, and Pitt filming at other locations, a few days past until I returned to Glasgow.

A colleague of mine phoned early Tuesday morning to say there were now hundreds of ‘extras’ in George Square and it looked as if things were hotting up. They certainly were: soldiers in armored cars, SWAT police teams nearby with shots ringing out in the air, cars crashing into each other and people running away and screaming; this was more like it.

Wednesday was great with Pitt and his co-star Enos appearing in a scene where they ran from a crashed car with the hundreds of terrified extras along the streets. Once, twice, three times… actually I lost count how many times they had filmed the scene, from different angles and with different lenses. At least it gave me a chance to move to other streets to get more shots.

Eventually the whole film crew let out a big cheer when someone with a loud speaker announced “We got the shot”. Thank goodness I thought, as I was getting cramp in my legs from being on my ladders for hours.

As yet there haven’t been any zombies involved in the filming. Zombies chasing Pitt down across George Square like a scene from a classic George A. Romero movie from the 70’s and 80’s is what I’m really hoping for. Hopefully that shouldn’t be too far away.

Zombies roaming the streets of Glasgow? Now there’s something you don’t see every day, well maybe on a Friday and Saturday night but that’s another story altogether.