When Oskar Helgason Soler sent us a link to a skate video from Iceland called “Ein með öllu” (“One with Everything”, also the colloquial way of ordering a hot dog – the unofficial national dish – in Iceland) we where like: “Iceland?”. We couldn’t remember any videos or skaters from the biggest volcanic island in the world, which instantly sparked our interest to find out more about the scene. Oskar is half Icelandic and half Spanish and was growing up in mainland Europe but for the past years is living in Iceland on and off. “I could be in Spain skating funky marble plazas, but there’s something special about the rawness of Icelandic skateboarding. It just hits different”, he says. His mate Stephen Shannen, who actually filmed and edited the video, also wasn’t born in Iceland but moved there from Manchester when he was 12 years old, first to Akureyri in the north (which made him a snowboarder temporarily) and later to Reykjavik where he tries to push the scene now as much as he can.
Oskar: The Gronze guys were here and just left last night. They got pretty lucky with the weather because it was dry for a week.
Stephen: Yeah, it’s pretty neutral. The Gulf Stream is what keeps Iceland, I guess, warm. So it doesn’t get too cold in the winters, but it won’t get too hot in the summers either. It’s a lot of rain and the winters are long and dark.
S: There has been a scene since the ’90s. And there are some videos that are on tape. They’ve not been published online. So you have to know someone that knows someone to be able to see all these old Icelandic skate videos. So yeah, there was a really productive scene in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
S: Siggi P (Siggi Pall Palsson) was flow on for Alien Workshop. So he was getting boards sent directly, and he had a Life-Splicing part that was all filmed in Iceland. He’s got a part in “Ein með öllu”, too.
S: They’re both really talented for sure. Siggi P has got the second part in the video, Rosant has got the third part, and Dadi has got the last part.
S: It’s been up and down for many years, and it’s always just been the core skateboarders. But now, it’s definitely booming. And we’ve got a homie called Siffi (Sigfinnur Böðvarsson) who has built a granite many pad and a granite ledge at a plaza. After that got put there, there’s always skaters at the Plaza now. And then there was The Skateboard Association of Reykjavik, which in 2016 got taken over by an extreme sports association that mismanaged the indoor skate park and everything. After they took over, it went downhill. Obviously, we were complaining and now it’s the Skateboard Association of Reykjavik again, and the core skaters are running it. We’ve cleaned up the skate park, we do second hand skate markets, premieres, skate jams and stuff.
O: There’s shop that sells decks but that’s more like an Urban Outfitters and there’s a shop that has snowboards and bikes and stuff. You can get your stuff, but it’s not really going to help skateboarding.
S: The core skaters, we just order all that stuff online.
O: Or when I travel, I go to shops.
S: Also when some of the homies are abroad, we ask to bring decks or wheels.
O: There have been skate shops, but they only lasted for a few years. The last time there was a proper shop was 2018 and that shop only lasted for a few months. The guy was supporting too much and giving out too much free stuff.
S: Then there was a legendary one in the late ’90s called “Tyndi hlekkurinn” which translates to “The Lost Link”.
Stephen
Oskar
O: It’s mostly just a spot to have fun because all of the ledges and the obstacles that have been DIY made. But you can still skate it as a real street spot.
S: Siffi was working with the city to make the granite obstacles look like they’re supposed to be there And the city was really behind it and funded it.
O: If you count the core skaters, we’re 50, and total people with a skateboard are around 100 in the country.
S: Yeah, there is a scene up north as well in Akureyri, which is, I guess, considered Iceland’s second city. There is a small scene.
O: Yeah, it has 10, 15 skaters.
S: Really good skaters as well. But it’s even harder to skate up north. They get way more snow than we do.
O: Reykjavik, the municipality area is super big and they’re building a lot, so there are new spots. I can’t keep up with the spot map. It’s insane.
"There’s people that come through here and then they see that there’s a scene and they get really surprised by the level of skating in Iceland."
O: There are a lot of spots in schools.
S: But it does seem that after each winter, the spots get worse and worse. But they will get redone sometimes. There is a spot with wooden ledges and we’ve turned the wooden planks around, so the good side is up again. The plaza is probably one of the smoothest spots in Reykjavik, but what sucks is that they put an ice skate rink there every winter. So now the surface is pretty uneven, and it becomes more and more uneven with each year.
O: After skating the indoor – we have two indoor parks in Island – for a couple of months, the first sessions at the plaza feel like the wheels get stuck. But then when you get used to it and you skate a little bit faster. There are some new places from the last five years. With the Gronze guys we went to a bunch of schools, to spots where maybe none of us have been in years. Because it’s hard to have a good weather day, get everyone together, and then go to a spot with a car half an hour away. It’s much easier just to skate downtown. Go to safe things. But I love going on missions. Sometimes we’ll fix a spot. Rubbrick and spray paint it. There are two or three plazas that have been built last year, that we haven’t rubbricked yet, but we can make it a plaza.
S: There is a surf scene here as well. I’m not too familiar with it, though, but snowboarding is connected for sure. We all snowboard. Two of the biggest names in snowboarding are actually from Iceland, Eiki and Halldor Helgasson, they’re from Akureyri. Eiki is the one that built an indoor skate park there. That’s something that also got the scene moving there as well.
O: This guy’s amazing. They had a flood in the skate park here, and he came and rebuilt it in a couple of days. He’s fully dedicated.
S: We’ve also got a concrete bowl in Reykjavik now. That’s also Siffi who’s responsible for this.
O: Some guys from the Netherlands came and built it.
O: Yeah, there’s a homie today building a spot. It’s just sometimes hard to get everyone together to do it.
S: There was also a DIY, the Heart Garden, that was in the city center.
O: It was super nice. I think Wes Kremer skated it.
S: No, Rune Glifberg.
O: There’s a Carhartt video.
S: And the Piilgrim crew (or Blue Flowers, how they’re called now) from Manchester came over 2018.
S: The city is definitely behind the skate scene. They’re really keen to push it. And the people like skateboarding, for sure. The plaza, for instance, now with these two ledges, there’s always an audience. And then there’s not a lot of kickouts either. You can just skate any spot and you’re not going to get chased after or the security is not going to show up. It’s definitely very friendly. The Gronze guys were tripping and said in Spain, they would have for sure got a couple of eggs thrown at them.
S: I think it is still very fresh when it comes to skateboarding. Not many people come here. They wouldn’t even think that there’s a scene here, because I think Iceland sells itself a bit as just nature and stuff. But Reykjavik, it’s a city and we’ve got a lot. You can get everything here. And it’s not burnt out spots like in other cities.
S: Everyone was just filming on the phone and posting tricks on instagram. At some point I decided to buy a camera and I started stacking clips. I think it’s really important that there’s someone local to represent the scene. And then through that I created Homies on Wheels, to use as a platform for the Icelandic scene. I started filming for this project late 2021 up until 2023. With a few clips here and there in 2024. I was just really long doing the editing because I don’t know how to edit. I’ve never edited anything before. I edited the video maybe 10 times or something. I feel like having started to film and stuff, it brought all the skaters together. Everyone wants to get clips. Before there were a few crews, and now everyone’s just skating together and it’s just a massive crew, which is sick. It is very tight knit.
O: Three years ago we didn’t have the outdoor park, we didn’t have the new granite ledges at the plaza, we didn’t have the association, the new skatepark of Hafnarfjördur wasn’t made. It’s grown so much in just a few years. Before it was harder. In summer you would just go to the plaza, but it wasn’t always people there and during winter, when we didn’t have an indoor skate park, we would just skate car parks and stuff.
O: I feel like the winter gets people together, too, because it shows who are the ones that really want to skate.
S: Yeah, there is the summer skaters that only show up in the summertime…
S: Yeah, we’ve done that. Some of the skaters also just move away. We have gone abroad on skate trips before. We did go to Barcelona two years ago in late November. I’ve seen some of these old Icelandic skate videos, and they did some tours. They went to London and Prague. The older generation were doing this maybe more than we are.
S: It’s always going to be pretty expensive to fly to mainland Europe or wherever but then once you get there, it’s cheap for us because you get paid pretty well here.
O: Iceland Air is pretty expensive but there are more budget airlines coming in the summer, but they’ve restricted them and sometimes in the winter, flights get canceled because of the weather.
O: Not really. I mean, there’s an Icelandic skater that moved to the US, called David. His insta is @icelandiceman. He does kickflips on rocks on top of a mountain or something.
S: He’s Icelandic, but he grew up in the States. I’ve seen him around before, but I don’t know him that well. He’s pretty sick.
S: Everyone’s got their own little thing going. Like our homie Lucky (Kritsana Moolek), he did the Homies on Wheels logo.
O: And at the moment I’m filming a cruiser part with him. For sure, this video brought the hype. I mean, this year was this video and just all the infrastructure. There’s a lot of talented people. We have a kid here. He’s doing nollie flips first try down the eight stairs, as good as any other good kid in Europe. There’s people that come through here and then they see that there’s a scene and they get really surprised by the level of skating in Iceland.
S: I definitely think it shows in that video. Most of us are all over 30, but still skating. Now the younger skaters are getting clips and they’re really throwing the hammers down. The clips that I’ve got now are like... Yeah, they’re definitely better now. Everyone’s more hyped after the video.
O: I mean, right now there’s nobody even on a flow team or anything here.
S: They could be if they would get the right connections and move abroad. But it’s definitely just passion, just purely passion here, I reckon.
S: Filming definitely brings everyone together, which is really nice because it’s not happened for so long. I think the last Icelandic skate video was done 2009 or something. So It just slowly died out. People just stopped filming. Then we would always complain about this. At some point I just decided to buy a camera and just start filming. We had a premiere at the skate park, and then we had an event and afterwards, a little skate jam. And we got loads of sponsors to give us prizes for tricks. It wasn’t like a competition. It was just more of a vibe. We also had a death race. Our friend Rosant, he had a 15-minute demo. We were just doing fun stuff. We also awarded the baggiest trousers, just things like that, so everyone can be involved.
