Vitus Silas is a name that by now you may have picked up on. Originally from Jutland, the part of Denmark closest to Germany, Vitus wandered off a few years ago to attend his dream school, Bryggeriet Gymnasium in Malmø, Sweden. You may have seen his name pop up in Emerica’s “Dispatch” video, or Volcom’s “Virgin Mojito” video, but after splitting ways with both of those sponsors he’s now skating alongside the Nike SB squad in Tor Ström’s upcoming video.
His skateboard journey started as young as four or five years old, when his dad gifted him a board for Christmas, which he admits he didn’t care for at the time. “I think for Christmas, when I was really young, maybe four, I got a board, but I never really got into it that much. I picked it up once in a while, then by the time I was eight I got really stoked on it and was riding around in the garage. My dad was also really stoked that I liked it. He was really keen to drive me to the skate park, with the nearest one a 30 or 40 minute drive. I was really blessed to have a dad that was also really hyped on my passion. He was also a little bit into skating when he was younger but I’d say he’s more of a snowboarder.”
The parental support always helps a lot when you’re that young, especially growing up far away from the hubs of skateboarding. Further on in his skate trajectory Vitus got into skating contests,even being on the Olympic team at the age of fourteen. These contests were our first introduction to him and his skating, and even back then, as a young contest kid, it was easy to tell there was something special about his skating.
While by now he’s dropped out of the Olympics and is no longer hunting medals, he still remembers the whole contest circuit as a good experience. “My dad would drive me around Europe, or maybe we would even fly to go to these amateur contests, where all of those guys I met from the other contest were also attending. It was really fun to go and meet all your homies that you don't get to see as often and then also get to skate the contest. When I was 14 I got the opportunity to skate for the Danish National Team, and they did all the “World Skate” trips. For two or three years I skated in the Olympic Qualifiers. I got a bunch of really good homies through those contests. It's so sick to see them every time you go. Imagine traveling the world with your best friends, especially from such a young age. I also got some really cool experiences out of it. For example, going to Tokyo was a really surreal experience. I did the contests for a while but it faded out with time, and now I'm more focused on the street stuff. I still think skating contests is fun, but I just have a different approach to it now. Now I take it more chill, and I don't really stress about going to all the amateur contests. But I'm really glad I did it, because it gives you a different perspective of skating, seeing so many different skaters from all over the world being so good, and it motivates you to get better. Maybe you see a guy do a cool trick and it motivates you to learn it, even more so than just seeing it on your screen. That's pretty sick. I think I got a lot of that out of skating those contests. The last two years I did Tampa, which was really fun.”
Straight on Feeble Grind
He would be keen to skate Tampa again any day, but living in the US is not necessary, he says. “I feel like it's shifted a lot. I don't know if it would be mandatory, but it would be the traditional way of making it in skateboarding. It would be like, skating in your hometown and then traveling to the US and filming over there and skating contests over there. But I feel like it's not as necessary today, if it’s even necessary at all.”
The traditional ways and structures in skating don’t seem to apply anymore. Vitus at 19 is definitely one of the younger guys we get the chance to speak to for this issue, so we were pretty keen to get a few insights on the younger generation. Vitus, whose first skate video was Pretty Sweet, seems to almost be an old soul when it comes to his introduction to skateboarding, one of the last to witness the great era of full length videos. “It's a pretty funny story. My dad bought Pretty Sweet on DVD and we had these screens on the back seats of our car. I’d just watch it on repeat every time he would drive me to the skate park, back and forth, 40 minutes at a time.”
Some of his mates were introduced differently. Apparently you can even tell a difference in the upbringing of Swedish and Danish skaters by their influences. “I think maybe it's also because I started so young. That's why I also got a bit of that era included in my time. If some people started a bit later then it might have been too late for those videos. But I mean, those videos are classics, so hopefully they've all seen them.”
Backside Nosebluntslide
There is no doubt that a place like Bryggeriet will try and shape kids into the “best” version of themselves, be it by measuring, like the “notorious Reynold’s challenge”, in which you write down all the tricks you’d like to do and repeat them over and over again, or by asking analytical questions tailored to your individual skateboarding. Seeing Vitus fly through Brygge’s skatepark is definitely a sight to behold. The last thing I remember are a huge gap backside noseblunt popping up in the feed, just after we spent the week shooting for this interview. Different breed the guy. At Bryggeriet you can pretty much skate every day. “It's always an option. We have 5 to 10 minute breaks during the lecture, then you can just go down to the skatepark and skate for that time period. Other than that, we have skate class once a week with John.”
John Dahlqvist, that is, Principal of Bryggeriet and a key figure in many people’s careers at this point. He is the one that not too long ago connected Vitus to the guys at Nike SB. It all went pretty fast in the past couple months. Tor Ström was working on a new video and pitched Vitus to get some clips for it during a Copenhagen afterparty, and shortly after he found himself on a filming trip to Stockholm. “He just asked me if I wanted to come. I was so stoked and said yes, of course. I went on that trip with them and met all the guys. I knew some of them already from before. Alex Elfving, Ville and so on.. It was so sick how fast everything happened. It took a while for me to realize how quick things actually went in that time period. It was only a month after I really got put on.”
Switch Heelflip
All of a sudden he’s in the mix, but skating alongside people like Hjalte and other top notch guys admittedly still gets him a little starstruck. “I love seeing them skate. Being on the session with them is just insane. It's a really good experience and they're all such nice guys, so they all just feel like really good homies, it’s crazy. Also being on trips with those guys for the first time was really nerve-wracking, but it ended up going amazing. All the guys were so nice and welcoming so I was super stoked.”
From the outside that excitement is pretty well concealed. Vitus, at least during the time we’ve spent together, is as calm and collected as can be. Maybe that changes when he’s playing FIFA or Fortnite with the other Euro jits, like Theo Löffler, Simon Gerber, and Madu Teixeira.
Fakie Heelflip
For his process in the streets he also has a level-headed approach. While he does go big and attempts scary stuff, he is methodical about the things he tries. “I like leaning my skating towards something I've done before. For example, if I were to skate a big stair, I like to refer to a skatepark stair-set. If I wanted to do a trick in the streets, then I'm going to try it in the skate park before. I can connect the dots between the skate spot and the skatepark. But then again, if it's a more chill spot, I might just try something and if it works, it works. When it comes to bigger stuff that gets out of your comfort zone, I like to have something to compare it to beforehand.”
He proceeds to show me an insane clip he got on a ten stair, right after being bummed out from looking at a rail spot and not being able to skate it. His revenge for himself not wanting to skate a rail was to effortlessly frontside 360 a set around the corner. That must be the “chill spot” he was referring to, but that also just shows how insanely good he is at what he does. If he does go skate that rail from before, you’ll probably hear about it. “Historically, a lot of things have gone wrong there. If your foot lands on the rail or in between the rail or the metal bars that attach the two poles, if they touch your truck, then you just get stuck so fast. It’s like so many things can go wrong, but I want to do it so bad. But I don't know. Maybe it's one for the future. I'm not going to stress it.”
On the verge of graduating from Bryggeriet, Vitus has yet to really make a plan of what’s next. Probably a job to continue paying the bills of his shared Copenhagen flat, some traveling, and hopefully a lot of skating, because that seems to really work for him.
