Ice surfing in Scandinavia: Why surfers brave the extreme cold

Freezing temperatures, hooded full-body wetsuits, and losing feeling in your extremities. Such imagery might not be what immediately comes to mind when you think of surfing, but for Scandinavia’s cold water surfers, these are the hallmarks of the experience. As this time of the year, when the weather turns and most of us are digging out a thicker sweater or brewing a hot beverage, they grab their wetsuits and put the kettle on for an entirely different purpose: to fill a thermos with hot water so they can soothe their toes and fingers, chilled to the bone after riding the icy waves.

“When I stop feeling my toes, which I do after one and a half hours, I go up, I put some hot water in my boots, I get the feeling back in my toes. And then I go out and can surf for another one and a half hours,” says Inge Wegge, a Norwegian filmmaker and cold water surfing enthusiast. “It’s okay,” he insists. “It’s not that bad.” There’s no official definition of what comprises cold water surfing, sometimes referred to as 'ice surfing'. Given that waters in Scandinavia don’t get especially warm even in summer and that part of the region sits within the Arctic Circle, it’s fair to say that if you’re surfing in these parts during late autumn and winter, it qualifies.

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Although there’s been surfing in Scandinavia since at least the 1960s – when Thor Frantzen and Hans Egil Krane supposedly braved Norwegian waves with woollen knitwear under their diving suits – but with temperatures plunging to well below freezing in some areas, surfing in such conditions has only really taken off in the last couple of decades, thanks to improved wetsuit technology.

Wegge first took up surfing as an exchange student in Australia 15 years ago, chasing the more commonly-held surfing dream of board short- and bikini-clad revelers riding sun-kissed waves beside palm tree-lined soft white sands. Yet it wasn’t until he returned home that he began taking it seriously. Unsurprisingly, surfing under an Arctic sky was quite a different experience to riding waves 'Down Under', but it quickly became the norm. “Even with Australia, it feels like I learned to surf and started really actively surfing [in northern Norway],” says Wegge. “So that's the natural thing for me, is when it’s cold.” With the best swells in the region occurring in the autumn and winter months, cold-water surfing is simply what you do if you’re a Scandinavian surfer. In fact, for Wegge and others like him, in some ways it’s warm water surfing that feels like the oddity.

“There's a couple of times I've been surfing in Costa Rica and you feel so free,” he says. “It's just weird, you don’t float by yourself. Like when you jump in the water, you actually have to move to stay floating whereas when you have the wetsuit on you float. And then when you get back to the cold water, it's so heavy to paddle. So that's when you realise, then you really see the difference. Because when you're used to it, it's like 'this is what surfing is', you know? It's really hard, it freezes your fingers and toes, and of course you have a wetsuit. It’s only when you get that change between cold and hot water that you really see that there's a huge difference.”

With cold water surfing, there’s no opportunity to lounge on the beach in your down time – instead, you’re more likely to be running back to your car or indoors to grab a thermos. “In hot water you can have many sessions in a day,” says Wegge. “In Norway, well, you have to have one session. Maybe two sessions if you're really lucky. But you don't want to be putting on a wet wetsuit in minus five degrees and heavy wind. That's just too painful.” Wegge can barely keep the smile from his face as we talk. Yet when he casually references things such as frostbite on his toes, it’s hard to resist asking the question he probably gets asked most: why?

“A lot of it is the lack of people. There’s a good chance that you’ll get a good wave almost to yourself, and we have really good waves, so it’s worth it. And when you’re used to it, it’s not that bad. It sounds terrible. But it's not like in the Chris Burkard video, where they kind of describe it as so remote and you have to drive a snowmobile to get to the waves, and it's like you almost die every time you go surfing,” he says, referencing a cold-water surfing TED Talk that’s been viewed over two million times.

“This is our daily. That's how we surf. You put the wetsuit on, you start moving and you get warm. I usually sweat in my wetsuit when I'm surfing even in winter time. As long as I'm active, I'm warm. Then it hurts for like 10 minutes when you take the wetsuit off and that's bad, but it's not as extreme as most people believe it is.” The pay-off is some of the most incredible surf in the world and the feeling that comes with riding those waves, something surfers from any climate can relate to.

“When you start surfing, you see how much it's more like an experience than a sport,” says Wegge. “Because you're out there paddling and struggling in the waves for two or three hours, and you probably have less than a minute standing on the board. That makes it a stronger experience. You’ve got to struggle a lot. When you get that wave, all that effort is put into it and makes it a great experience. And it's probably a cliche to say, but when you're surfing, you can have a ten second wave and it feels like minutes of surfing, because you're so focused on that moment and the adrenaline is pumping. It's happening now. It's now, now, now. So it's much more like the whole experience of being out there. You can sit there and you can really enjoy being out in nature, because it's so beautiful around you.”

This sense of wanderlust is particularly resonant in Wegge’s filmmaking. A decade ago, he documented his experience of living for nine months in a remote cove on the Lofoten islands, in what would be the first in a series of films about exploring isolated locations in the region – and snowboarding, paragliding and surfing around them. Flanked on each side by snow-topped cliffs, Wegge and his friend Jørn Ranum lived off food that was past its expiry date and built a cabin out of driftwood and other materials that washed up on the shore from the Atlantic Ocean. The resulting film, 2012’s North of the Sun, won a host of awards at film festivals from Vancouver to Melbourne, and was named by Time Out as one of the best surfing movies of all time.

While it may be easy to say while watching Wegge’s films from the comfort of your sofa, the icy natural landscapes he captures on camera make you see the appeal of braving the sometimes brutal conditions. The extraordinary beauty of the region plays a strong supporting role in his films, as the protagonists board down untouched snow, dance under the Northern Lights, and – of course – catch some incredible waves. It was this terrain that also hooked Fredrikke Jerring, who has spent the last four years living on the Lofoten archipelago.

“It’s the indescribably majestic nature in combination with world class waves that makes Lofoten and Unstad such a special spot for surfers,” she says. “The other day we jumped into the water and were surrounded by mountains with clouds wrapped around the peaks and fresh snow covering the very tops. It was the first snowfall of the season. Every 15 minutes the weather changed from fog to hail, and from rain to sunny. It’s a unique feeling when you’re sitting in the water looking around you – you feel like a part of nature in a way, yet really small. But at the same time strong and empowered.”

Related: https://www.voguescandinavia.com/articles/best-places-to-go-diving-in-scandinavia

Jerring now seeks to pass this feeling of empowerment on as a key member of a growing community of female surfers in the area. “I think females in general are more apologetic than men and if we’re not super skilled at something we are less likely to take a place in the lineup and risk ‘wasting’ a good wave by possibly failing. So, when I take photos and write features about surfers in Lofoten, it’s become really important for me to also focus on women in surf and contribute to empowering women to dare more, go for it more, be unapologetic. Take your place and give zero f***s.”

As co-owner of the Lofoten Apartments, a 1946 fish processing plant in Hopen “where the mountains meet the sea” that’s been converted into modern rental accommodation, Jerring has also witnessed the rise in interest first hand. “The surf community here is absolutely year-round for the locals, while most tourists are here during summer. But I’ve seen a definite growth in the number of people in the lineup during the more ‘off tourist season’ as well,” she says. “When I first moved here, the lineups were almost empty during winter season. Now people come to experience the extremes more.”

As northern Norway’ s reputation in the surfing community has grown, cold-water surfing has also received some celebrity endorsement, with Byredo founder Ben Gorham becoming such a fan that in 2018 he took a trip to Alaska specifically to tackle some of the world ’s iciest waves. He was joined by Manne Haglund Glad, co-founder of Stockholm Surfboard Club, which this summer issued a special capsule collection in collaboration with Gorham inspired by the adventure.

Like Gorham, Glad has gotten a taste for cold-water surfing, though again he sees it as a natural pursuit in this part of the world. “For me, it’s always been if there is surf, I want to be able to surf,” he told Vogue. “It’s all about weather, but it’s not about if it’s good or bad. It’s like, you really want to do it so you just accept the fact that you’re here, and if you want to surf, it’s going to be cold.” The growing profile of Glad ́s Swedish-born label is one sign of how interest in surfing is surging around Scandinavia, not just in Norway. Areas on the coasts of Iceland, Finland and Denmark – where Klitmøller has earned the nickname of “cold Hawaii” – are also catching the attention of cold-water surfing devotees.

Having highlighted the beauty of being out on the waves with relatively few other surfers, Wegge says, “surfing in this area has exploded [in popularity]” in recent years. But it’s not entirely overrun just yet. It still takes a hardy soul to want to slip on a wetsuit when the temperature is down and the surf is up, and as Wegge adds with a mischievous grin, “there's probably a lot of spots in the north of Norway that people don't know about – or don't talk about.”