Scotland's Vikings go own way in independence vote.
GULBERWICK, Scotland (AP) -- In the late winter dusk, hundreds of Vikings are marching down to the beach, bearing flaming torches. Their studded leather breastplates glint in the firelight as they roar and sing.
It's a scene that would have struck terror into the hearts of Dark Age Britons - and also perhaps an unsettling one 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 northern archipelago where many claim descent from Scandinavian raiders. They are cool to the idea of Scotland leaving Britain to form an independent nation, and determined that their rugged 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 local authority 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: a chunk of Britain's oil and gas reserves lie beneath Shetland waters.
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