Ultra-swimmer inspired by Thor actor Chris Hemsworth to take on Iceland swim

An ultra-swimmer has said he was inspired by actor Chris Hemsworth’s role as Nordic God Thor to take on a mammoth swim around Iceland.

Ross Edgley, 39, from Cheshire, joked the challenge will be “the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard” – the home of Thor – as he plans to swim 1,000 miles around the whole of Iceland in a challenge expected to take three months.

Mr Edgley said the idea for his challenge was inspired by Marvel’s Thor star Hemsworth, who introduced him to Nordic folklore after they met during the production of Thor: Love And Thunder.

“I was always just full of questions, just saying, ‘why are you doing that? Why does Thor do this?’ and we just got chatting,” the ultra-swimmer told the PA news agency.

Ross Edgley is expected to take around three months to complete his 1,000-mile swim around Iceland (James Appleton/BMW)

“His (Hemsworth) knowledge of Nordic folklore is amazing. He’s like an encyclopaedia of it. We got chatting about that and then he sort of explained (the folklore) to me.”

“I just thought Iceland, which inspired Tolkien and various other Nordic folklore, is the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard.”

The athlete will begin his journey, named the Great Icelandic Swim, on Friday, where he is expected to face choppy waves, killer whales and temperatures as low as 3C.

His swimming pattern will consist of swimming for six hours and resting for six hours, which will be repeated every day for around three months.

Mr Edgley is no stranger to difficult challenges after he swam more than 1,791 miles in 157 days around the coast of Great Britain and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest distance assisted adventure swim after covering 317 miles along the Yukon River in Canada.

He said the Iceland challenge is likely to be “twice as hard” despite it being almost “half the distance of the Great Britain swim” because of the colder temperatures.

“Usually in England, when you get out of a frozen lake, you’re running somewhere where there’s a hot chocolate and you can get around the fire, but out there it’s just Viking countries,” he said.

“The wind chill is a different sort of cold and that was a wake-up call for me.”

The 39-year-old said he is aiming to get “as fat as possible and as fit as possible” in order to combat the cold temperatures.

“Body fat is insulating, so the more of it you have the more insulated you are… you just kind of want to be almost seal-like,” he explained.

The swim is also being completed in the name of science as he has teamed up with the University of Iceland and the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland to take daily water samples.

The samples are designed to help build a picture about the biodiversity around Iceland’s coast and help towards researching the environmental DNA (eDNA) in the water.

“It allows us to take an incredible picture of the biodiversity all around Iceland,” Mr Edgley said.

Ultra-swimmer Ross Edgley will face choppy waves, killer whales and temperatures as low as three degrees (James Appleton/BMW)

“It would allow us to take eDNA samples all around the coast, so we would be able to map the biodiversity of Iceland in a level of detail that’s never been seen before.”

He hopes the public will follow and support his Great Icelandic Swim as he shares updates via social media.

While he acknowledged his followers may tune in to “see my tongue fall off because of the salt water”, he also hopes the challenge will educate people about Iceland’s biodiversity.

“Come along, see my tongue fall off, see killer whales and seals… but ultimately, it’ll be brilliant to communicate the science as well,” he said.