Ross Edgley in a dryrobe stood in front of a mountain and a car

Blog - The Great Icelandic Swim - a saga lived and told by Ross Edgley

The Great Icelandic Swim - a saga lived and told by Ross Edgley

12 minute read

Solo swimming 1,000 miles in the home of apex predators while combating treacherous conditions of icy temperatures, intense winds, and fierce waves is a feat so extreme that it almost resembles something from a myth or legend.

The protagonist of this real-life epic is Ross Edgley. You may know him as the first and only person to swim around the entire coastline of Great Britain. He’s the UK’s most prevalent record-breaking endurance athlete, who sets outrageous challenges for himself that defy what we think humans are capable of.

The latest addition to his epic list of accomplishments was completed on September 6th, 2025, when he became the first person to circumnavigate Iceland by swimming.

Over 114 gruelling days at sea, he completed the 1,000-mile journey around the entire coastline of Iceland, collecting samples along the way.

How did he do it? A crazy schedule of swimming for six hours and then resting for six hours.

The challenge was nothing short of eventful. Like all good sagas, it entailed stories of Arctic storms, whirlpools, a volcanic eruption, and an emergency rescue of 30 beached whales… Posing the question, what didn’t happen during The Great Icelandic Swim?

We spoke to the world record holder himself to find out how to survive 1,000 miles swimming in the Icelandic Sea.

Congratulations on completing the Great Icelandic Swim. It’s incredible what you’ve accomplished! How are you feeling? Can you believe it’s over?
No, I can't believe it's over. It feels really, really strange. It was a strange way to spend a summer, but an amazing way to spend a summer.

I think as well, I didn't realise how hard it was gonna be. A great example is Sir Robin Knox-Johnson, the first person to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world, an incredible sailor, and a bit of a hero of mine. I was speaking to him, and he sailed around Iceland a number of times, and he said to me, ‘Ross, Iceland might be almost half the distance of Great Britain, but it might be twice as hard.’

And I’ll never forget when I was two weeks in, I thought to myself, 'He's lying. It's four times as hard. This is brutal!’

The tides are so unpredictable. You get whirlpools, getting caught in an arctic storm. When the wind and waves are coming from the Arctic, that's a different sort of cold. I thought Scotland was cold. It just isn't. There are levels of cold!

I'm feeling incredibly proud of the team and everything we've achieved. And no, I can't quite believe it's over. I look back at footage now because we're editing it for the Channel 4 documentary. And I can't quite believe that we survived what we did because Iceland threw everything at us.

The documentary's amazing, but you'll see storms, hurricanes, and a volcano in Grindavik. Just when we thought we'd seen everything, we got hit by storms, hurricanes, and then Iceland went, ‘There you go. There's an active volcano!’ And we had to swim away from the fumes and volcanic ash, and an entire town was actually evacuated.

Along the swim, you conducted research, including collecting 100 eDNA samples and tracking cetacean movements and numbers. Were there any standout findings you can share?
Yes. We're so excited about this. We haven't got the findings back yet. That's all, still with the University of Iceland.

However, essentially, our job was to collect eDNA samples. At the University of Iceland, the scientists were amazing, and they just said, ‘Look, if you have someone crazy enough to try to swim around Iceland, that obviously gives us an amazing opportunity to conduct research in a level of detail we've never seen before.’

So, I just said, ‘I know a guy, hold my beer,’ and the rest is history. Again, a shout-out to Solomon Weston. Actually, he was our marine biologist on board. He was amazing.

That is now all with the researchers, and they're having a field day with it. No findings have been reported yet, but what we tracked was an insane level of detail, including tracking the oceans and biodiversity around Iceland at a level of detail never seen before.

I cannot wait to see the findings of that.

Ross Edgley in the sea in a wetsuit and holding a water bottle

How did you keep your cold management under control when swimming in water temperatures as low as 1°C (33.8°F)?
Number one was just to get fat. I got SO fat, I put on about 10 kilos. It was awesome. I was just eating anything and everything. Just taking inspiration from seals, basically. I just needed blubber. You know, fat is insulating. That's what I needed it for. So that was the main thing.

I think, as well as all of the tech. Obviously, everything that Dryrobe® stands for. That was amazing. However, I also couldn't rely solely on tech. I also needed to rely on my own physiology.

So how did I combat the cold? It was a fusion of changing my own physiology and fat to become more like a seal, combined with incredible tech with Dryrobe® when out of the water, and then when in the water, wetsuit tech as well. Like I said, a fusion of the two.

A challenge of such magnitude and harsh conditions must produce brutal results on your body - we’ve seen the video of your tongue! How do you safely recover after such an epic toll on your body?
It was really strange, actually, because I always say that on an event like this, the rate of exertion always exceeds the rate of recovery. So it's kind of weird, you know that your physiology is imploding.

I actually got pretty bad “Rhabdo" halfway round. For those who don’t know, that's when your muscles liquefy and end up in your bloodstream. Then your kidneys have to work overtime to try to get rid of that, which is in your bloodstream. And, if they basically decide that there's too much work, your kidneys can pack up.

It's very, very bad. Rhabdo can be really bad. So it was just basically pacing strategies, nutritional strategies, just trying to make sure that my physiology didn't implode before I got all the way around.

A huge shout-out actually goes to Tom, who was on the boat; he was ex-special forces in the Canadian military. He was unbelievable, and he nursed me back from the dead. Like my tongue, open chafing wounds as well, that were turning into sea ulcers. He was incredible. For 114 days, two swims a day, he patched me up, put my wetsuit on, and treated wounds.

So, how did I do it? Basically, an incredible team is the honest answer. And specifically, Tom, who was in charge of all things health and safety.

What was your top moment?
Hands down in Siglufjörður, north of Iceland. We were hiding from a storm. And then, this was so strange. I received a message from the local lifeguard, the Coast Guard, and they basically said, 'So sorry, Ross. I know you're tired. I know you're just coming in from a swim. 30 pilot whales have been beached near a sort of inlet, a fjord, and we need all the help we can get. We're trying to push, pull by rope and by hand, to get them back out to sea.’

I immediately got this call and rounded up the team. We ran down to the beach, and then we just waded into the water.

I forgot my dry suit. So I was running in my vest and my shorts. And, I'm happy to say that we saved all 30 pilot whales. It was unbelievable. It's in the Channel 4 documentary, but it was really emotional.

I think arriving, a lot of the whales had essentially given up. I don’t know how long they'd been there, but they weren't moving at all. Their eyes had rolled to the back of their head. They’d just given up, and then when the water came in, and then as it was coming out, that's when you would basically trying to push. They were the size of a car, so imagine trying to push that back out to sea.

Locals who didn't speak any English, I didn't speak any Icelandic, we were bonded by this common goal, even though we don't speak the same language, to just get these whales back out to sea.

And you were pushing, you were pulling, you were absolutely exhausted. And then, after it would take about 30 minutes per whale.

As you were pushing and you managed to just get them a little bit like deeper into water, that's when the whale, would look up, his eye would open and it would just look you straight in the eye and there’d just be complete communication between like two different species, and it'd be like, ‘Oh, you are helping me.’

So then there was a little bit of hope. So then the whale would actually start thrashing and moving its tail, trying to help itself back out to sea.

We did that 30 times. We got all 30 pilot whales back out to sea. It was unbelievable. I was so emotional at the end.

Not just for me, but for the entire team, it was the best experience ever. The swim was incredible, but I think I said at the time, there's a time to be a good swimmer and a good athlete, and there's a time to be a good human.

And in that moment, the swim didn't matter. It was just looking after those whales. It was amazing.

Ross Edgley walking out of the sea in a wetsuit

How do you overcome hurdles, and what kept you motivated when times were tough?
This, this is really interesting, actually. I'm writing a book about it at the moment, and we just signed a publishing deal.

The one thing that really motivated me was the sagas. Those who don't know, the Icelandic people are among the best storytellers in the world. Their sagas, every single fjord, every single bay, every single beach, there's a different story, a different Nordic folklore saga. It’s unbelievable.

And they didn't just tell these for the sake of entertainment. They actually contained profound lessons in there. How to survive harsh winters and battles, just with stoicism and grit. And I learned so much all the way around from some incredible people. And I think it was learning about the mythology, the folklore, and everything like that, that's actually what kept me going.

I think it was in the West Fjords and a local there who was, I suppose, an old Viking priest. That's essentially kind of what he does. And he said, ‘Ross, if you actually are crazy enough to do this, then you know there'll be a saga written about you one day.’

And I was just like, ‘Oh no, that'd be pretty cool.’ So I think it was that, and that's what I'm sort of writing about at the moment. This new book is so strange. It's a fusion of ancient Nordic folklore and modern sports science. It's gonna be amazing. I'm really excited about it. I'm 30,000 words in.

It's really, really good. So that actually kept me entertained.

What couldn’t you have done the challenge without?
Good question. I think, caffeine, a lot of caffeine. Because when you're doing two tides a day, it doesn't matter if the tide changes at two o'clock in the morning or two in the afternoon, you get in and you swim.

So caffeine was my best friend. Just to overcome my circadian rhythm - your body's 24-hour biological clock. When it was wondering why I wasn't in bed, it was essentially like, 'Okay, there's some caffeine.' And trying to convince the body and the brain to jump in and throw myself overboard near the Arctic Circle.

So I think it was that. And I think I speak for all of the team, the Dryrobes. We lived in them. Not only on the boat, but it was really funny when we used to go back to land as well. Well, actually, my favourite burger place was in Vestmannaeyjar, a small island, just off Vik on the South coast.

We would just all go out for dinner, and we'd have burgers, and we'd be sitting in this incredibly nice restaurant, really fancy restaurant, all in our Dryrobes unapologetically. That was our uniform, that was our team uniform. It was exactly the same in Vik as well. There is a place called School Beans. It’s a cafe that has the best hot chocolate, muffins, and sandwiches. And again, as a team, it became like a ritual that between tides, when we're on that south coast, we would all just go in there in our Dryobes and we would all smash litres of hot chocolate just sitting there.

So, Dryrobes, hot chocolate, and caffeine, in summary!