The Nordic Obsession with Wild Swimming

There comes a point every summer when I find myself standing at the edge of a fjord, a lake, or the sea, watching sensible people do something that appears entirely irrational.

The sun is shining. The air is warm. Summer has finally arrived after what felt like eight months of darkness, snow, rain, slush and waiting.

And yet the water is still absolutely freezing. It takes a few months to warm up and right now it's not "a bit chilly." Not "refreshing." It's absolutely freezing.

The sort of cold that makes your ankles immediately question your life choices.

And still, one by one, people launch themselves in.

This is when you realise that wild swimming in the Nordic countries isn't simply a summer activity. It's practically a personality trait.

I wasn't raised with wild swimming. Growing up, swimming generally involved a heated pool, a changing room and the comforting knowledge that nobody was voluntarily entering glacial meltwater. Occassionaly we'd swim in the sea or a nicely landscaped French lake, but rarely in wild lakes or rivers.

The first time I went to Scandinavia was in the year 2000. I was running my own event management company and I had been invited on a very exclusive small group trip to look at some luxury hotels in Uppsala just north of Stockholm. Some of the other guests were English like me and our hosts were Swedish. We stayed one night at a beautiful rural manor house on the edge of a lake and one of the hosts suggested that we all went for an early morning swim in the lake. I loved getting up early on these kinds of trips and wandering around getting a true feel of what a place was like. I wandered along La Croissette in Cannes, or around city streets in Limassol or was the first in the hotel pool in the morning. So the idea of taking a 6am swim in a deserted lake really appealed to me. I got ready and went out to the edge of the lake where some of the others were going into the water off the jetty. The lake was completely still like a mirror and it was a bit chilly. Mist hung over it and there were a few birds floating around. As I stepped down from the ladder into the water and I realised that I couldn't see my feet. The lake was spotlessly clean but the water was pretty peaty and so beyond a certain depth you couldn't see any further down. This totally spooked me and I am afraid to say that I didn't swim that day!!!

Then I moved to Norway.

At first, I approached wild swimming with a bit of caution. It sounded a bit dicey like it should be something that you need training for. In reality it's just swimming out in nature. It could be a lake, the sea or a river. But it's never fancy. There are no beautiful pontoons and attendants waiting with towels. It's usually a seashore or a lake shore and you wade in often through weed and not knowing what is under your feet. But people still leap in. It can be really cold and quite a shock to the system. But you adjust.

The shock passes. The cold becomes bearable. The water that looked so hostile from the shore suddenly feels exhilarating.

You climb out a few minutes later feeling oddly triumphant, as though you've achieved something far more impressive than simply swimming for a while. Which, I suspect, explains a great deal of the Nordic fascination with cold water. Modern life is surprisingly comfortable. Most of us spend our days indoors, carefully regulating temperature, avoiding inconvenience and solving problems with the touch of a screen.

Wild swimming asks something different of us.

It demands that we be fully present, rather like going to the cabin. It's about reminding ourselves that life can be simpler. You cannot worry about emails while stepping into a Norwegian fjord. You are not thinking about tomorrow's to-do list while lowering yourself into a mountain lake. Your attention narrows instantly to the water, the temperature and the very immediate question of whether your heart is still functioning normally.

It is mindfulness, Nordic style.

Less scented candles. More involuntary gasping!

Of course, the obsession also makes perfect sense when you consider where people live.

The Nordic countries are blessed with water. Every village has a lake and they appear around every corner. The coastline feels endless. Tiny beaches hide between granite rocks. Forest paths often lead unexpectedly to places so beautiful they look as though they belong on the cover of a travel magazine. And unlike many parts of the world, these places feel surprisingly accessible.

You don't need to book anything. You don't need a membership. You don't even need a plan as such. You just grab your stuff and head outside and eventually you'll come across somewhere to swim.

Some of the best swimming spots aren't famous at all. They're known only to locals who have been returning for generations. Many of the lakes have names that aren't even on maps. So you can find yourself looking for ages over a map and finding nothing.

But every summer people return, introducing children to the same swimming spots where they once learned to swim themselves. And perhaps that is another reason wild swimming feels so important here. It isn't just exercise. It's a special summer tradition. Because if there is one thing Nordic people understand, it is that summer should never be taken for granted. After months of harsh winter, nobody wants to waste a sunny evening indoors.

The moment the weather improves, life moves outside. Dinner is eaten on terraces. Coffee is carried to parks. Boats appear in harbours. Gardens fill with people determined to absorb every possible minute of sunlight.

The water reminds you that you are alive. It wakes you up. It interrupts the constant background hum of modern life. For a few moments, everything else falls away.

You feel the sun on your shoulders. You hear gulls overhead. You notice the scent of pine trees drifting from the shore.

You pay attention.