Icy dips
Winter swimming is the cure for everything.
Some say, with the utmost conviction, that winter swimming can cure winter depression. Science is divided on the subject, but the Facebook group Kallbad would agree. According to the members of the group, winter swimming not only thwarts your usual winter depression, but also cures anxiety, stress and rheumatism. Furthermore, they’re eager to tell you that other desirable side-effects include shinier hair, better skin and an improved immune system. It’s the cure for everything, it seems. And as the icing on the cake, some experience improvement in their vision as a result of their icy dips.
So what’s not to like? Well, perhaps that many of the films the members upload to Facebook display people having to pound the ice in order to break it before they can get their fix. Even I, raised on a diet of raw carrots and never complaining, still feel that having to break through the ice in order to take a plunge is taking it a step too far. However, as the supply of corona-friendly leisure activities is ever-shrinking, and with this trend being so in vogue, I thought I should give it a try.
When I depart for Tantobadet on Södermalm on a grey winter Wednesday, I feel like I’m on my way to a first date. The nervousness and uncertainty, of whether it will end in that fuzzy, warm feeling of happiness, or just be a complete belly flop, is definitely present.
Upon arriving in Tanto, it feels just about as strange to stand on the pier undressing as it would showing off your worn-out wool underwear on a first date. In accordance with the instructions I’ve taken from experienced winter swimmers, I keep my hat on. The water is grey, the sky is too. The pier ladder? Grey.
Now, finally standing there in my swimsuit, there’s no room for hesitation. Splash, and I’m in. It’s eight degrees and very cold. I definitely forget my cocky notions about staying in for three minutes, and I forget breathing too. To describe the experience as enjoyable is an overstatement, but self-torture wouldn’t be fitting either. The feeling post-plunge, sitting there looking out over Årstaviken in a thousand layers of clothing, sipping a cup of tea and sensing my skin warming up again is extraordinary. And lo and behold, the person who said your vision improves has a point. I see clearer now.
After this initial bathing experience, I’m developing a taste for it. Let’s do it again. Advent Sunday begins with snowfall and later in the day I make another splash, this time at Norra Djurgården. It’s colder this time and I have to enter from a little beach. I control my breathing better, which according to the winter swimming guru Wim Hof is at least as important as the cold itself in reaching the positive effects from cold baths. I also manage to stay in the water a little longer. When my feet and hands are close to a permanent numb state, I get out and swap my wet swimsuit for two down jackets and three pairs of pants. I feel fresh, in better spirits, happy, and a long way from winter-depressed. Professor Fredrik Nyström has shown that there are positive effects to being chilled, as it increases the activity in the body’s brown fat. It could be the down jackets, but after this swim I think it seems like my brown fat has woken up, and is generating some extra warmth.
On December 1, I get to tag along with the experienced winter swimmer and radio journalist, Jack Lantz, to his bathing spot at Riddarholmen in Gamla Stan. “I wouldn’t call myself a winter swimmer,”
he says before adding “I’m just a swimmer on the whole”. Jack is following the motto about swimming as close to your home as possible, as he lives in a commune in Gamla Stan. That actually seems to be sound advice, which I also get from several other winter swimmers – make your bathing routine as simple as possible to make it become a habit. In contrast to many other people in the winter swimming Facebook groups, Jack says that he doesn’t do it due to health reasons, but that he rather experiences it as an addiction. “If I haven’t been swimming, I feel that the world turns grey and narrow, like an itching wool cardigan full of bread crumbs. That’s when I need to get in the water”.
Jack estimates that he has been swimming about once a week, all year round, for the past two years. The habit began one scorching summer in Beijing a couple of years ago. “I was sitting in an office and was close to perishing in the 40 degree heat, and I felt that I just had to have a bath. But where do you do that in a giant and dirty city with 20 million people? By this little, constructed lake in the middle of Beijing, I saw a large sign saying ‘Swimming Prohibited’. But there were about 20 old Chinese people who were defying the ban and were inside the water. To their great surprise I joined in, and then continued swimming with this group of 60-95 year olds every day. In the winter it became pretty cold, it was minus 16 at its worst, but the pensioners were well-organised and sawed up a great hole in the lake so we could swim around.
When Jack and I go for a swim in Riddarfjärden, we don’t have to saw through any ice, but Jack tells me that he experiences the same feeling he did after his swims in China: “That I love the whole world”. I can only agree, not even the extremely noisy sewer draining going on nearby, reminding us we’re in the middle of the city, can dampen my post-bath peace.
Sweden has, according to the Swedish Maritime Administration, 48,000 kilometres of coastline, and on top of that, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute states that we have close to 100,000 lakes in our oblong country. You would be fairly hopeless if you couldn’t find your way to a spot to winter swim in, close to where you are located. Seeing as there seem to be almost as many reasons to try winter swimming as the number of Swedish lakes, there aren’t really that many excuses to not crush the ice and your fear of the cold simultaneously.