The Ethereal Force

There is a violent beauty that only reveals itself when the world begins to die. At -27° C, the North stops being a landscape and becomes a predator.

These images are born from the Black Rapids of Storforsen, caught in a moment of elemental war. Here, the water refuses the grave of the ice, throwing up a spectral 'river smoke' that masks the jagged teeth of the stone. It is a place of restless ghosts and liquid shadows, where the sun’s light is bled dry by the mist, and the air itself turns into a jagged, crystalline blade.

To stand here is to witness the defiance of the current against the absolute silence of the frost. It is a glimpse into the veil—where the familiar terrain of home dissolves into a dark, ethereal realm that does not welcome the living.

The Ghostly Exhale

The Breath of the Frost-Giant: A Return to Storforsen

The camera felt strange in my grip, a cold weight of iron long untouched since the autumn fires of Abisko faded in September. For months, the landscape around me had grown monotonous—a cyclical repetition of familiar treelines and unchanging horizons. I feared the spark had disappeared, lost to the mundane.

But the North never remains silent for long.

Driven by a restless craving to hear the shutter's click and feel its purpose, I made my way to Storforsen. The temperature had plunged to -27° C, a cold so sharp it cut like a blade against exposed skin. My expectations were low—just the same landscapes I'd documented countless times before. I braced myself for a frozen, lifeless expanse.

The Ritual of Ice

As the roar of the water grew closer, familiarity vanished. Storforsen was no longer a tourist landmark; it had become something otherworldly—a place of dark fantasy.

The river, defiant and raging, rejected winter’s icy grip. From its turbulent depths rose a ghostly steam—the Vatna-Gandr, or water spirit—floating in thick, ethereal plumes above the torrent. It was as if the river itself was alive, its warm breath pushing back against the suffocating arctic cold.

Capturing the Ethereal
The frost stripped away the ordinary. I moved along jagged, ice-coated banks, hunting for angles that felt less like photography and more like pursuit—each shot a prize waiting to be claimed.

My fingers grew numb, and frost crept over my lens, but the images were unlike anything I’d captured before. These weren’t shots to be replicated—they were fleeting portraits of a moment that felt torn from a Norse epic, a scene where the elements ruled as gods, and we were mere witnesses to their power.

The Veiled Sentinel

The Unbound Maw

The Bleeding Horizon