When I went to Iceland in February, I went with the hope of finding a chance to watch a documentary I’d seen mentioned in the Reykjavik Grapevine: Swimming Pool Stories, a film about Icelandic pool culture. I couldn’t find it online. Was there maybe a cinema in Reykjavik where I could catch it? Might it turn out to be on the Icelandic version of BBC iPlayer when I was actually physically in Iceland? Could I find it on DVD? I failed on all three scores and then promptly forgot it existed.
Until I was on the plane coming home in August. Normally I go straight to movies on my built-in entertainment screen but for some reason, I flicked through TV instead. Five random episodes of Young Sheldon, lots of Icelandic stuff, lots of Icelandic stuff that’s actually just advertising its scenery and restaurants, five random episodes of shows I’ve never heard of and – and Swimming Pool Stories! Here on the plane!
Audio is in Icelandic and there are no subtitles. Fine. I’ll watch it anyway. I can fathom a certain amount just by watching. So I was very pleased when I discovered that the reason there are no subtitles is that the (English) subtitles are automatically built in. Nice!
Swimming Pool Stories is a documentary of an hour or an hour and a half, all about pools. We get a hint of the long history of Icelandic bathing, in that the local semi-natural hotpot in the village was used for washing, and then the modern history starts in 1923 with the building of Seljavallalaug, possibly in response to a major drowning incident off the coast.
As the documentary goes on, you see lots of pools, usually in drone shots, bright blue in the snow. This is broken by aquarobics shots of people waving multicoloured pool noodles, filmed from an angle that makes them fill the entire screen. I’ve done aquarobics once or twice. I’ve used noodles. I have never waved them above my head. But I admit, they’re colourful, they look good on screen and they do break up the colour pallet of blue, grey and white.
Filming began in 2013 and spans right up about 2021. A lot of it is focussed on the story of the Pavilion Pool in Dalsvik. There’s a new open air pool in the village and it can’t support the cost of running two pools. It gets a brief reprise when the outdoor pool is closed but ultimately, it’s had its day. You do get the feeling that Swimming Pool Stories partly exists to highlight its plight.
It does what it says on the tin. It’s stories from swimming pools. Most of them are stories of older people who meet up here for early-morning swimming groups, to tell the stories of how they learned to swim when they were children. One cantankerous group of men doesn’t admit women to their swimming group – it would “change the dynamic”. Odd dynamic – once a month, they gather in the changing rooms and get publicly weighed. Naked. Not only that, it gets written down. One man observes that he could get out the books and see what he weighed in 1974 if he wanted.
Speaking of naked, you get an entirely unnecessary shot of a baby boy having his nappy removed. It’s in the context of “mummy and baby swimming is lovely!” but you could have cut it at the point where the babygro comes off. You put that shot just about anywhere other than an “arty” culture documentary and you’re going to have to answer some questions. The weighing scene is mostly shot from behind but one man steps on the scales and the camera moves slowly down just far enough for me to go “No! I didn’t want to see that! And oh god, I definitely don’t want to see even a hint of that!”. You’ll know when it’s coming. I mean, I suppose I talk enough about how part of the culture of swimming in Iceland – and northern Europe in general – is the communal shower and changing rooms and I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked to see that element of it appear on screen… but it was early in the morning, I was on a plane, there are things you don’t expect in a pretty snowy blue pool film.
And on the subject of the cantankerous old men, I think they’re the ones who swim at Sundhollin in Reykjavik. They highly disapprove of the new outdoors extension, refusing to even go in it. No, they want to swim in the original pool. Fair enough, but the original one is inside – admittedly in a magnificent Art Deco hall – and it’s cold. They call the new extension “a tourist pool”. They’re not wrong – this particular tourist has made use of it on many evenings when she has no other plans in the Big Steam (that’s my nickname for Reykjavik).
So there are the old men swimming, the mixed old people swimming, the baby swims. There’s the rehab group, there’s the swimming champion whose sport has enabled her to overcome her Down’s syndrome enough to live independently. There’s more old people swimming. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. 80% of this is about finding the oldest swimmer in a particular group to tell you that they enjoy the feeling of community and they enjoy keeping fit.
I suppose I don’t know what more I expected. Of course it was going to be about the virtues of health and swimming. Of course it was going to be about community. I just think I might have expected the stories of community to be a little more varied. The young as well as the old, the people who swim for fun, the people who swim seriously as well as the people who swim “for their health” and for the social aspect. People who aren’t there at ouch o’clock in the morning.
Other than the x-rated shots mentioned, it’s very beautiful. You can watch the trailer here for an idea of what it looks and sounds like. Lots of shots of blue steaming water, lots of discrete subtitles naming the pool and giving the date it opened – a lot of them are a lot later than I’d have expected. I always equate Icelandic pool culture to British pub culture but in fact, it’s really only taken off in the last 100 years. That’s an exact figure, not a rounding – it’s really only since Seljavallalaug was opened in 1923. Nowadays, pretty much all Icelanders can swim. A study from the BMJ in 2016 says 95% of children and 96% of adults in Iceland can swim. I can’t find the UK in it – can’t even open it – but I found a 2016 YouGov article that says 88% of Brits “say that they can swim”, with 61% rating themselves as “reasonable”, “good” or “very good”. Breaking it down a bit, that’s 70% of 18-24-year-olds compared to 44% of over-65s. How long have people on my island been going to the pub? Since ever! How long have Icelanders been going to the pool? 100 years this year.
So it opened my eyes a bit to real Icelandic pool culture. It was very beautiful. I’m glad I finally got to see it. I’m interested by the last line of the Grapevine story: Director Jón Karl Helgason says “I am doing five other documentaries.” If there’s another about pools in there, I’ll be on it. Meanwhile, if you can find somewhere I can watch this film again from the UK, leave me a comment.