Elli Thor Magnusson

We had a chat with Icelandic surf photographer, Elli Thor, about his adventures around the world and the growing surf scene in Iceland.

Getting a start in photography

My dad had a proper Nikon camera, which I would borrow and shoot rolls of film, but I’d end up losing them somewhere. I did the usual photography course at school when I was 14, which was all in film, but I didn’t really get into it at that point.

Then when I was around 21 I was in Nepal kayaking - which I used to do a lot of. I spent all my money on a DSLR camera. I started taking photos of my friends and travelling and I thought “this is something I wanna do”. 

Iceland is a small place, everyone knows someone, so I asked around and a friend of mine connected me with an advertising photographer who I worked with for 2 years. I did a lot of studio stuff and then applied to go to a school in London to do a BA and I got accepted. But then someone told me about a school in Cornwall where I can surf too, so I was like “F**k that I’m going to Cornwall!”

I was in Falmouth in England for 2 years studying a BA in photography until the financial crisis hit Iceland which meant I couldn’t afford it anymore.

I loved Cornwall, I loved the people, the old pubs and stone houses, especially in the winter when there are less tourists. I loved the ales, the ciders. I still love the sausage rolls and Cornish pasties!

Finding a passion for the sea

I started surfing in Iceland when I was around 18 or 19. We were the first generation of surfers here and I thought maybe this is something I want to do.

Then I ended up working for this guy in advertising and it was super fun, learning about lighting and everything but it’s very different from what I’m doing now.

My parents were massive outdoor people, they were members of the Search and Rescue over here. Every weekend or holiday when I was a kid we’d be somewhere in the highlands - hiking, cross-country skiing, or biking. So I always did things like climbing and snowboarding and when I got my first camera that was all I photographed. 

The advertising stuff was a big shift, but it was a nice opportunity. It’s always good to go and do something completely different and then, if you want, you can go back to what you were doing with a different perspective on it.

I like all aspects of photography, even doing the commercial thing. Most of my income is connected to surfing or the outdoors, but it’s not just surf photography. The surf photography led to a lot of commercial work.

I love surf photography and it helps because when you do something that you’re passionate about it leads to better things. 

Exploring the Arctic seas

I saw you were with the Faroe Islands guys! The Faroe Islands are awesome and the people are so nice. We call them our brothers and they almost speak the same language. It’s like Iceland about 30 years ago. 

The first people that started surfing in Iceland were Americans from the Navy base here. We had a big Navy base here in the ’90s. 

My friend Ingo went to France and brought a board back for me in 1999. You had to rely on friends travelling somewhere and coming back because there was nothing here. 

There was one snowboard shop in Iceland that me and my friend Ingo were sponsored by. They got surfboards and we were like “ah, we can surf here!”. 

I did a lot of travelling for a while. I went to the Philippines, New Zealand, and Hawaii where I spent a few months away at at time but I’d always come back to Iceland. 

The warm water is nice and everything, but then there’d be pro surfers coming here as well, to find new waves and I was just like “what am I doing?”, we are the ones who should find these waves. When you do get good waves here, they’re of very high quality. 

So I decided to stop travelling as much and focus on Iceland because it was a time when there was so much more to be discovered and that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It’s like being in Cali in the 50s, and once it’s done it’s done. 

It’s so funny being a surf photographer from Iceland, it sounds absurd, it’s so isolated! There are no surf shops or anything but then, on the other hand, the shelf life of a photograph in Iceland is longer, because there are not as many. 

Here you can sit on photos for a year because there are just not as many. On one hand it’s harder, on the other hand, it’s easier.

Surfing Iceland

Tourism was getting crazy in Iceland. We’re a population of 350,000 and before Covid happened we were having 2 million tourists per year, which is quite the population explosion and it all happened in the span of 6 years.

It was both good and bad, some people complain about it and, of course, when you go to places that you’ve been going to since you were a child and it's full of people and there’s litter around its not good, but then it also became Iceland’s biggest industry. 

Before the tourism boom, the whole focus was on electricity and they had plans to dam so many rivers and put power lines everywhere. But when tourism became more and more popular it shifted the focus towards protecting the environment more which is great. 

Then you have these small towns that people are leaving or not inhabiting and then all of a sudden they have hotels and restaurants. So there are good sides and bad sides.

In regards to surfing here, there was a big increase in pro surfers coming over and a few regular people coming too, but it was never really that big. I think the biggest influence has actually been since Costco came to Iceland. I'm not kidding! 2 years ago they came and started selling Wavestorms and there has been a huge explosion of local surfers since.

Surfing is super fun and everyone was a beginner at some point so I love the enthusiasm, but when you’re used to surfing spots alone for 15 years and all of a sudden it’s full of people, of course it can be frustrating, but there are always other spots around Reykjavik.  

There are still no real surf shops here but my friend Ingo, the guy who brought me my board back from France, has a company called Arctic Surfers, he does private surf tours and sometimes runs a 3-day course for beginners.

With Costco and Wavestorm people can get a surfboard for 200 dollars and with Covid, there was a big explosion. People are working at home and have time so they’re like “this is sick!”. 

The water temperature is a lot different between the south and the north. I live in Reykjavik and this is where the most consistent surf is. The gulf stream comes right up here so it’s not crazy cold most of the time even compared to Cornwall, but you do have days where it’s windy and -5! 

When you’re up north it’s different, you don’t have the gulf stream, you have these fjords which means the water doesn’t move around a lot. It can be 0 degrees and that’s proper cold! 

The south is a little milder than the north but it’s crazy how good these wetsuits are nowadays, if you have a good wetsuit, it’s like cold isn’t a thing anymore.

Icelandic surf going forward

We never expected it to be so popular with the locals in Iceland like it is now. 

With travelling surfers coming over, it’s super hard to come for 2 or 3 weeks and try to figure the place out without any local knowledge. There are so many variables like we have no trade winds for example and the weather patterns are super random.

In some places, there’s quite a difference between tides and then you have some fjords where there are separate weather patterns - the wind will funnel out this or that way. 

There are lots of crazy good waves that work once every two years or so. It’s super easy to see photographs of Iceland and be like “oh, this is sick”  but you kind of need to live here or spend a long period of time to really get it. So that is a pretty big filter for people.

Iceland is actually pretty big once you get here. When you go to the local point break, there will always be between 8 and 20 people nowadays, other places are a bit more, but the coastline is so big, which means there are still so many other areas where you can go and have your own space. 

There’s a crew of 10 - 12 people who have been surfing here for a long time and then there are new surfers who are all frothing on surfing, which is awesome. They haven’t travelled much so they don’t really know the unwritten rules of surfing, so it’s our job to teach them a bit.

I don’t think I’d ever open a surf school or anything myself, I want to focus on photography, I don’t want to turn surfing into a job. I just like being by myself a bit when it comes to surfing.

There’s been a crazy explosion with cold water surfing worldwide, I mean in the fall all 6mm wetsuits were sold out. It didn’t matter what brand, they were sold out wherever you looked. 

There used to be unexplored frontiers all over, if you were a good surfer you could go and find new waves. Most places in the warm water have already been discovered now, so when people first started coming here, it was definitely because of that.

It's like going back in time you can explore and it’s such a privilege to be a surfer here and to be able to find new waves. 

When we were surfing 10 or 15 years ago, we’d go to a little town and people would ask “What the f**k is that on top of your car?”. Historically Icelanders are scared of the sea, it’s a fishing nation and a lot of people have been lost at sea. 

They were like “You can't surf here, there are crazy currents!” but slowly young people realised that you can surf here in Iceland. 

Surfing is so fun and there’s something special about being in the ocean, once people realise they can do it and have access to equipment, they want to do it, you know?

I did a surf in the Faroe Islands 8 years ago and there was only one local surfer. I had a flashback to when I started surfing in Iceland. The locals were almost forbidding me to go in the water. It’s the same thing, a fishing nation and a lot of people were lost in the ocean. But then people get used to it and now younger people see the ocean as a place for recreation.

Drawing Inspiration

It’s interesting because the kind of surf photography I’ve always been interested in is more the lifestyle and the people. I like that way more than just the action.

It’s a subculture and I always love when photographers are involved in what they are doing and they can show you a window into another world, that not everyone knows. That’s what I love most about surf photography - the people. The surfers. 

I’ve been getting into film, well I’ve kind of been dragged into it a little. We did a self-funded surf movie about 7 years ago called ‘The Accord’. It won some awards and from that, we got some other jobs.

So I got into film a bit although I never wanted to because it’s so much hassle compared to photography. Nowadays I’ve been doing more film stuff than photography. I had a photoshoot before Christmas and I was like “this is so easy, it’s nice, so much less equipment than with film”. 

But I do like it, I really like writing up a story or concept, developing it, and seeing it through. It’s a painful process with editing, but once you get to the final result it’s super fun to find a story and see it realised. 

I’ve always been into writing, I actually did a year studying literature at university, I’ve always read a lot and I’m just interested in stories. Photography is the same thing. My favourite is editorial photography where you’re shooting a whole story versus a single image and you’re telling a story about the people in it.

And then I love music. I started collecting vinyl records a long time ago. Now they cost a lot more!

When I started collecting them there’d be an ad in the paper here in Iceland where you could buy 5 boxes somebody has discarded for about 150 bucks!

I have varied tastes in music, I really like music from the 60s, 70s and the whole country/rock thing like Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers and then reggae. A very varied taste! 

I play guitar but I’m not very good at it, I played in a punk band in my 20’s. The punk scene here was pretty big, we caught on late so it was more like the 80s than the late 70s, but yeah there was a big punk scene.

Settling & Travelling

I wouldn’t move away from Iceland. I mean, I used to hate living in Iceland when I was a snowboarder. It sounds funny but Iceland isn’t good for snowboarding or skiing because when it snows it tends to be too windy. It’s very rare to get good powder because it blows away and stuff. 

I was all into snowboarding from when I was 9 until I started surfing and I just hated this place! As soon as I could I went to the Alps and did seasons there. Then I started surfing and I was like “oh, man”, I realised I loved this place.

I don’t think I would move fully away because I like it here. The surf still has a sense of wildness to it. You can still explore and camp and be on your own and that’s what I really love about it...that said I'm ready for some warmer weather for a bit and some warm water trips!

I’ve been to the Philippines a few times and really liked it. I would love to go back. The first time I went to the Philippines, I went for almost 3 months and knew nothing. I went all over and some guys told me about Mindanao, It’s the kind of place if you asked your embassy they'd tell you not to go.

It was super nice, there were no tourists, not even a restaurant in the town. There was a river mouth wave and a few reefs. I’ve been back again since. I really like the Philippines, the people are great.

I’d love to go to New Zealand too, but I really want to do a proper Baja trip on a 4x4 with all your own food!

All photographs via @ellithor / ellithor.com