At the start of the long winter of 2019, I decided that I’d try winter bathing for the first time.
If you, like me, live in Copenhagen, you’ll know all about it: the Danish tradition of swimming in the harbour all the way through the depths of winter. People praise it for its energy-giving properties – once you’ve been in the cold sea first thing in the morning, the boost it gives you sees you through the rest of the dark winter day – and for its health benefits, in tandem with a sauna, as well as the community you build through doing it. At the time, I didn’t really know much about that, I just knew that I liked swimming and I needed a little help to get myself over burnout.
I’d struggled at work, and finally, overloaded with no hope that things would get better, I quit. I wanted to take some time to get better before I did anything else. A Danish friend and therapist had suggested to me that gaining a deeper connection with nature might help. She meant that I should take walks in the forest, really, but I thought I’d try finding it in the sea instead.
When I took my first dip at Kalvebod Bølge at the start of October, I didn’t know that it would take me all over Scandinavia, to Oslo, Reykjavik, Helsinki and beyond, in pursuit of something quite fundamental: the secret to Scandinavian happiness. After an epic cold water dip in Bergen, Norway, I decided to go swimming in the harbour, wherever I found myself, once a week through an entire year to see where it would take me.
There’s a magic in making small promises to yourself, and a particular magic in the compound effect of small actions. Think about it as saving 10 kroner a week for a rest of the year in a high interest account: the result is surprisingly worth it, and the cost is minimal. I promised myself to get into my swimsuit and into the harbour every week, for a minimum of five strokes each time. In the winter, I ran down the quay in Teglholmen in howling wind and often snow to get into the water as quickly as I could, so that I could get out again as quickly as I could. I kept my promise to myself all the while.
As spring broke, travels took me to other places in Scandinavia. I took the train to Malmö to try out the Kallbadhus seawater spa that I’d long wanted to visit. Nobody told me that it was a nudist spa. In the end, it didn’t stop me: I found that I enjoyed the communing with nature that takes place when there’s not a scrap of Lycra to get in between you. I went to Oslo and swam in an empty sea pool on the day after National Day, as the Norwegians slept off their hangovers. I saunaed and swam in Helsinki and off islands in Finland, islands in Arctic Norway, and all the lovely beaches of Denmark I could find. I swam alone and I swam with friends and visitors and it became the best start to the day, every day.
The more I swam, the more people I met who were also swimming. I was curious every time as to why they were doing it. The same things came up repeatedly: community, health, calm, nature. “It’s the best experience of being in nature you can get,” said a friend I made in Iceland. “When you’re taking a hike, you’re walking on it. But when you’re swimming, you’re completely surrounded by it.” It made sense to me: Scandinavians have always been in touch with nature and it takes more than cold temperatures to put them off.
My year of swimming in Scandinavia came to a peak towards the end when I travelled to Greenland for work. It was a wild dream of mine to visit, let alone swim there, and when the opportunity arose to get in the water, I grabbed it with both hands. I ran full pelt down a heather-clad hill to the most perfect crescent of white sand I had ever seen on Uunatoq Island. Nevermind that the beach was gently shelving or the water was ice cold, with icebergs drifting a couple of hundred metres away, I kept running until the water was up to my thighs and I could find a way to swim. I swam and swam, running back to land when my fingers and toes started to throb from the cold. Then I did a few jumping jacks to warm up and I went back in again. I could see seaweed fronds drifting in the sea beneath me, and tiny shells and rocks studded into the sand. It was the cleanest, clearest water I’ve seen, and its life- giving energy was immense.
I ran back up the hill and sank into Uunatoq’s hot spring, where little bubbles of air came up from the silty bottom of the pool. What seemed to me to be a crazy pursuit at the start made sense a year in, in a way I couldn’t have imagined. To go sea swimming is to immerse yourself in nature and to honour it, to join a community and to do something that’s good for your health.
Every major town or city in Scandinavia lies on the water and embraces some kind of swimming practise – yes, even in Greenland. If the secret to happiness in this part of the world is found somewhere else beyond the sea, I’d be very surprised. I wrote a memoir all about the year I spent swimming in search of happiness in Scandinavia in the hope that other people who have felt burnt out or directionless, here and elsewhere, could feel a sense of hope that things can change, and that life can get better. My recommendation is to just try to put one thing into your week that you love doing and try to do it for a year. You’ll be surprised at where it will take you.
Laura Hall’s memoir, The Year I Lay My Head In Water, is published by Icon Books and available now. You can follow her on Instagram at @laura_hall_swimstagram
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