Finland ice swimming

One of the things I love to do when traveling is seeing the things that normally the tourist doesn’t see, so we always place a call on social media and hope to find a local photographer that is willing to show us around and take us places we would otherwise never see…. and we were not disappointed this trip, I think we had three of the best tour guides available.

 

In Tampere we were shown around by Matti, a well known Finnish photographer and teacher.
One of things I love to see are people in not everyday situations for us… so according to Matti I had to see ice swimming.
Now imagine us on the shore in thick clothing (several layers), wearing gloves and seeing people in only their swimming trousers and a hat (very important) going to the water (which is all frozen over) to take a little swim after which they will just sit outside and enjoy the weather or go in into the sauna.

 

I asked if I was allowed to take some images and, probably because this seems to be very common in Finland, it was no problem, so today I present a small series I took on Ice swimming.