"North the Sun": the search for the perfect wave on the Arctic Circle

Inge Wegge and Jørn Nyseth Ranum are looking for the perfect wave. Unfortunately it only comes as a package deal with cold feet. The two Norwegian surfers decide to spend the winter in a secret bay on the Arctic Circle anyway and make themselves at home there for nine months in a self-built hut made of driftwood.

The Atlantic supplies the firewood for the stove for free – as well as huge amounts of plastic waste. If they do not want their surf paradise to degenerate into a rubbish dump, Jørn and Inge have no choice but to clean up the beach.

Whether it is collecting rubbish on the Norwegian coast, a lonely mountain-bike road trip like Kyle’s, or the hardest offwidth crack in the world: the European Outdoor Film Tour (E.O.F.T.) has been back on tour since October 2013. The two-hour film programme shows the most exciting sports and adventure films of the year, including the environmental documentary “North of the Sun”.

A lonely beach on the Norwegian coast, murky twilight. For more than two months not a single ray of sun has managed to reach the floor of the bay. Hidden here between two boulders is a little hut with a perfectly round door. The two Norwegians Inge Wegge and Jørn Nyseth Ranum built it entirely from driftwood to overwinter in it and surf the best waves of the North Atlantic. They want to spend nine months away from civilisation, without internet, without obligations, without stress.

The bay can only be reached on foot, but “because everyone should find their own paradise”, Inge and Jørn do not want to reveal its exact position. A paradise with minor flaws. When the fire in the sheet-metal drum converted into a stove goes out, it gets so cold in the hut that even the olive oil in the bottle freezes.

Then Inge and Jørn have to go outside again to recover, saw and chop driftwood. But the ocean washes even more onto the beach: three tonnes of plastic waste. The two surfers, who actually only wanted to ride waves, cannot watch their paradise turn into a rubbish dump and begin to systematically clean up the beach.

An insight that the “Wide Boyz” Tom Randall and Pete Whittaker can only agree with. The two British climbers are experts in offwidth climbing – the most brutal form of crack climbing (“the size where nothing fits”) – and, to the great astonishment of the US locals, claimed the first ascent of the world’s hardest offwidth route in Moab (Utah). Though only because they prepared for this challenge on a perfect replica of the “Century Crack” in Tom’s cellar. Two years of torturous training that evidently paid off..

Article image: Pressmaster/ Shutterstock

Translated from German by Claude. Read the original in German.