A Surf Festival Fit For a Viking

Now in its sixth iteration, what began as a friendly competition among friends has morphed into a weekend-long event of surfing, nonsense, and borderline bad decisions - including chugging beers between waves to stay warm.

“At the time I was hosting around 4 local comps a year in my spare time… [and] registration fees… were just enough to buy beer for the judges after. Boretunet came to me for help to get guests from Sweden and Denmark and the Surf Fest concept came to me there and then. Longboarding events like the Single Fin Mingle, Duct Tape, and Mexi Log Fest are just way more fun and no one else was doing them in Scandinavia at the time.”

Despite drawing influence from other longboarding festivals around the world, there are few surf festivals that take on a similar approach to Surf Fest Scandinavia, which organizes its daily events around the weather and is thus 100% mobile. This means that competitors and onlookers wait in intrepid anticipation for the daily WhatsApp report from Berggren on where the festivities will be held each day.

In recent years, Berggren and his team - which includes renowned filmmaker, surfer, and official Surf Fest “vibe-cultivator” Jonathan Strömberg - have expanded the festival activities to include a freesurfing shoot and a film night to showcase surf creative works before the competition. This year, Buoyancy - a film about another thriving alt-surf scene in Taiwan, and Ceibo - a film about women’s surfing and activism in Ecuador, lit up the screen on Thursday night inside a cozy nook at Boretunet. 

Friday began with the freesurfing shoot, as photographers Runa Andersen (@runaandersen) and Ivar Vasstveit (@ivarvass) zipped into wetsuits thick enough to pass as seal blubber, heading like solemn Viking warriors into the grey, cool North Sea. 

Competitors, friends, commentators, and judges alike slipped into the surf for the freesurf - where a beautiful peeling left acted as a smooth, grey, canvas for some of Scandinavia’s best surfers. There were even a few international surfers joining in, such as Lucy Small representing Australia, who left late summer balmy temperatures in France to don her 4/3 Yulex suit and join in on the fun for the weekend.

Passionate about encouraging more female surfers in Scandinavia, Andersen recently started the @queens0fthenorth Instagram and has begun to document the growing community of west coast female cold-water surfers in Norway. This increase in representation was reflected in the competition numbers this year, with more women participating than men. In total, there were thirty-eight competitors, including 22 women and 16 men, most travelling from Denmark, Sweden, and other far corners of Norway.

In their 6th year, founder Berggren has managed to create a cozy, intimate event that somehow feels like you already know everyone as soon as you arrive. It isn’t uncommon to see competitors at the grocery store between heats, or fathers photographing their daughters from the cliffs as they surf against the wind-gnarled and barren stony North Sea coastline. They will proudly point their daughters out to onlookers and cheer them on between passing storms.

While Norway has made a name for itself for having cold, hostile, and harsh weather conditions, none of this bleakness translates into the warm charisma of Scandinavian surfers. Upon arriving at Surf Fest, you’re greeted by cold, weathering winds, but also by the happiest, most welcoming group of people you could imagine. Berggren reflects, “Moving back to Sweden [after a brief Australian stint], I thought I had to let surfing go, but the small Swedish Surfing Association showed me the way to keep it… so I have a lot of gratitude for this community and naturally feel the need to give back.”

On Friday evening, official heats began and all competitors and onlookers headed to Byberg near Hellestø for the first rounds. Despite the savagely windy conditions, surfers managed to score some decent rides with Danish Longboard Champion Noa Stender Mikkelsen snagging a 7.13, and Freja Pettersson Kristensen receiving a 6.88.

The next day, conditions were marginally better as the wind held off for the final repechage heats and moved into the quarter- and semi-finals. As finals approached, the men’s and women’s divisions were stacked and onlookers cozied in their dry robes, huddled under a tent like penguins sheltering from an Arctic storm. As the freezing rain frosted long beards and braids, the Longboard Queens and Kings stoically headed out for finals and straight into the icy North Sea as if it were their battlefield.

The men’s division started and you could tell talent was high, since despite treacherous and windy conditions, all surfers managed to score at least 9 waves. Mikkelsen slid into first, closely contending with Berggren - Surf Fest founder himself. Third and fourth place were awarded to Toto Idrovo (DK) and Espen Sakariassen (NO) respectively.

All queens also surfed with ease and grace despite the freezing rain pelting down, with Lucy Small (AUS) and 2025 European Longboard Champion Thilde Sofie Rasmussen competing head-to-head. Rasmussen eventually took first place, scores coming down to the very last wave. Freja Pettersson Kristensen and Sara Bjurbäck represented their Danish and Swedish flag proudly, coming in third and fourth place respectively.

However, the fun didn’t stop there. The Paddle Battle was an additional highlight of the weekend, where in a demonstration of high-stakes athleticism, all competitors were challenged to chug a beer, paddle out through the whitewash and around festival founder Berggren, and run back to the beach. First one back won an incredible 5’7 McFlurry Shake - a custom board boasting a traditional fish outline with some modern elements to handle more radical turns. The board was designed by Jan Helge of ADHD Surfboards, a name born from his hyperfixation on design and materials. Of course, Mikkelsen - one of the tallest Danish surfers - won, miles ahead of anyone else attempting, and went home with the fish surfboard about half his size.

As the weekend comes to a close and you find yourself munching on a free salmon burger - essential cold-water surf fuel - provided by the festival team, you can’t help but feel as if you’ve been welcomed into the warm Scandinavian family. As the sun sets a few minutes earlier than it did just a few days ago, you begin to understand why, despite the darkening sky, everyone here is just so darn happy, and you start to believe it’s the kind of optimism you can bring home with you.