Shetland Islanders’ Viking heritage casts shadow on Scots independence

In the late winter dusk, hundreds of Vikings march down to the beach, bearing flaming torches. Their studded leather breastplates glint in the firelight as they roar and sing.

It is a scene that would have struck terror into the hearts of ancient Britons, and is also perhaps unsettling for modern politicians on both sides of Scotland's independence debate.

The fearsome-looking participants in a Viking fire festival known as Up Helly Aa live in Scotland's remote Shetland Islands, a wind-whipped archipelago where many claim descent from Scandinavia.

They aren't happy with the idea of Scotland leaving Britain to form an independent nation, and determined that their islands - closer to Norway than to Edinburgh - will retain their autonomy, whatever the outcome of September's referendum.

"Shetland is different. We have Viking blood in our veins," said the procession's magnificently bearded chief Viking, or Jarl - by day a housing officer named Keith Lobban.

There are only 23,000 Shetlanders, too few to make much difference to the outcome of the independence vote. But they have Viking-sized confidence, and a big bargaining chip in a chunk of Britain's oil and gas reserves which lie beneath Shetland waters.