Rán

Rán entered my world after I moved back to Scandinavia. I was 26 and had been on the path of a generic pro surfer, but I’d been building a dream of returning home and exploring. I had started accumulating a list of places in the Baltic and then also touching the rest of Scandinavia with my imagination, looking at the maps and the imagery. Within 10 days of moving home, I found a wave at the end of the world that my friends and I called Valhalla. At that moment, everything switched for me and confirmed my decision. 

A year later, I’d saved up and bought a jet ski. My friend Seth Påhlsson and I were deep into exploration, scouting for waves together, bouncing ideas off each other. A certain reef had caught our interest. He eventually scouted it alone, on a small swell, and saw there was potential. 

Later, I went up with another friend, photographer Carl Johan Kimell, on a swell that was slightly larger though still nothing significant. I had time to kill, and there was a high-pressure system over Scandinavia and a low-pressure system at a decent angle. I drove 30 hours to get there and put the ski straight into the water. Neither Carl nor I had slept on the way up. 

We motored out through an archipelago, and, as we rounded a headland, I thought to myself, That can’t be the wave we’re looking for. I stopped, took out my phone, and started checking the charts and the bottom. It far exceeded my expectations. A massive set was coming through, and I saw that most of the waves were draining. I also saw that I had absolutely nothing to do there. Carl hadn’t been trained to drive a ski, I had no flotation, and I only had a 6’2″. It was hard to tell exactly how big it was, but it looked like it was 10 to 12 foot Hawaiian.  

We sat in the channel for half an hour with our minds blown. I was very aware of what I was looking at—and that I hadn’t slept for two nights. It was not the moment to make any big decisions. We went back to the car and slept for two or three hours, then motored out again in the afternoon. It was late summer with its long days. The surface was still glassy, and the light was very pink. There were animals in the water, huge seals and sea lions, and eagles overhead. That part of the ocean is maybe the least explored by man, because it is so cold, and people haven’t spent time submerged in it until now, so it feels very ancient and wild. 

The swell had dropped quite a bit by then, but there were still some big sets, and it looked intimidating. I decided to paddle out and spent the next hour feeling like I was avoiding my death. The water was rippling with huge boils. The board felt like it couldn’t compete with the currents. I began edging myself closer to the takeoff spot. You know how the mind goes: Come on, you’re going to do this, look at it, sit closer, move up the reef.

After a while, one of the biggest sets of the day came through. When I saw it, I knew I was going to take it on the head. I paddled as hard as I could and got to the corner. I was still hit by a piece of the whitewater, just a touch of it, and the power was overwhelming. 

I managed to get one wave, right toward the end. I was forced to straighten out into the flats because the right was bowling so hard, but I felt what it was like to commit to one. Carl said he lost sight of me for a long time after that. I turned up only after paddling around the whole reef, and then the inner island, in the dark. 

That night, we cooked dinner and watched the footage and saw how small I looked compared to the sets. The size hadn’t just been my imagination. I dropped Carl off on the way home, and then I had about 24 hours in the car. There are a lot of empty places in Scandinavia, and they do something to you. Extremely long drives, through incredible emptiness, can create a sense of manifesting. I felt alone and empty. At the same time, I had the terrifying thought that I’d have to come back one day. Only a madman would walk away from this wave. I realized it needed a name.

*

Rán is the ancient goddess of the sea, a pagan goddess, from the time of the Vikings and even earlier. Her husband was Ægir, a giant. He represented the calmer side of the sea, whereas Rán was known for its perilousness. She was also very loving, in a sense, and wise. The story goes that she would capture drowned sailors and take them to her underwater halls, where they would celebrate for eternity. 

After my first experience with Rán, I spent almost a decade trying to get it under the right conditions. In 2016, I went up with my friend Nic von Rupp, the Portuguese big-wave surfer, plus ex-pro Ryah Arthur, Scandinavian surf explorer Tore Kramer, and filmmaker Gustavo Imigrante. We drove that endless drive. It was -30°C. We had a couple of windy days of surfing. The group never got to see it big enough. One wave came in during that trip, though, which was twice the size of everything else, a behemoth that spat. Nic saw it, and he also now had been given a taste.

I left my ski nearby, thinking I was going to be back within a couple of months, with the mindset that I was going to dedicate myself fully to Rán. Two years passed before I could retrieve it. I began exploring across the Baltic, in other places that require time, surfing islets and trying to find the magic that I’d moved home to look for. Rán was always on my mind.

I went to Portugal in 2020 to visit Nic. Like every time I’m with him, he managed to push me to do something I wanted to do but didn’t know it, which was to surf Nazaré. Later, I met Andrew Cotton, the British big-wave surfer, and we immediately became friends. When I told him about Rán, he said, “I don’t even have to catch a wave. I just want to help you achieve this”—a testimony to his character.

In March of 2024, I decided I was going up to Rán for a month. We set a waiting period, and, a few weeks into it, a huge swell formed. It wasn’t heading toward Ireland or Nazaré or France or the UK. It was heading north. The early readings were three times the size of the first day I turned up at Rán. Cotty called me before I even had a chance to call him. We phoned Nic. Each day, the swell kept getting bigger. It usually can implode in that region, or take a different path, but it didn’t. 

*

Our base was an old schoolhouse. I slept by the window, looking out as everyone arrived: Morgan Maassen, Magnus Nordmo, Sonny Erhardsson, and Anton Renborg to film, Mike Eriksson to take photos, and Cotty and Nic to surf and help manifest this dream into a reality. Each of them had made sacrifices to come, but they all saw it as an opportunity or an honor.

Vigo, whom I’ve come to call Grandpa, is a ship captain from the area. He agreed to take us to Rán. We were like a small armada heading out the next morning in Vigo’s boat, with a smaller boat for the cameras, and the ski, creeping out through the archipelago. It was strange to be there again, nine years since I’d first seen it. There was so much more energy in the water. 

As we rounded the headland, we saw the wave and a lot of whitewater, and Cotty zoomed off on the ski into the outer realms of the channel. When the next set came, it had a different movement to anything I’d seen previously. It had its own unique kind of Nordic movement.

 Rán is a tricky wave because on some of them there is a longer wall, but it is a huge mass of water coming from about a mile of depth within a stone’s throw. It’s like this mound underwater, so it is very focused. The wave has no back. It implodes. You don’t want to fall in the barrel. You really don’t want a lip to land on you. You don’t want to fall in a way where you are going to skip across the surface. There’s a lot of chandeliering and exploding foamballs. You have to find the line between being in the barrel as deep as you can be but, at the same time, making it out before the implosion.  

I spent my first hour getting a few good ones, about 10 waves, figuring it out. Then Cotty and Nic each took a turn. On Cotty’s first one, he went very deep and pulled in and disappeared. He came up quickly, but took one more on the head, a big one, and then a third lump came and focused in front of where he was and dumped right on him. The inside of the reef drops away into deep water, so there’s this waterfall that’s created beneath the surface as the whitewater rolls over the reef. That wave pushed Cotty so deep he came up with a nosebleed. He shook it off and got four more. It was really impressive to watch how he surfed and handled the situation. Then Nic was up, and he was his usual self, sending it, surfing super solid. They inspired me and gave me a sense of the right way to surf the wave. 

*

I watched from the boat for maybe an hour, and I began wondering if I’d achieved what I’d come to do. Vigo was standing next to me on the bow, and suddenly we felt the wind switch slightly, becoming even more perfect. He said, “Ah, here it comes. It is here now.” Morgan called on the walkie-talkie from the other boat and told me I needed to get back in the water. Something was happening. Something had shifted, something crazy. Vigo explained that we’d come to a moment in the tide when it was slack, when there was no movement and no current—his fisherman’s insights. Cotty and Nic then called, asking if I wanted a final run. 

My adrenaline had drained away from the first session, but I was ready and asked them to come pick me up. A big set came in on Nic’s last wave, which was probably his best one, a huge shadow hanging over him. He went deeper than he had before. I think we had all been telling ourselves in our heads that we were still not deep enough.  

Once I was back in the lineup, it was obvious how insane it had become. Rán was sucking out over the reef, except it was glassy, incredibly smooth, and perfect. The surface was flawless. Like Nic, I put myself deeper on the next wave than I had earlier, but I still wasn’t as deep as I could’ve been. 

The thing with Rán, when you’re getting towed into it, is that you can’t know what’s coming. You can’t tell the difference—if it might be a good one compared to something treacherous. You only see a lump. You’re letting go as far behind the lump as you feel comfortable, and then suddenly you find out what you are into.

My next wave was almost too big. It hit a little cap and sent a bit of water off, like it was going to crumble, but it didn’t. Then it hit the reef and threw. It’s actually quite surreal that I made it, since there were so many explosions. My board somehow ended up in the right places to bounce over them, and I came out of the mist into the channel. Then Nic put me on another one, and I started to see it warping, and I just remember the bang from the lip exploding, a crazy sense of momentum and power behind me, like dragon’s breath. I’m happy I made that wave. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t. 

Nic von Rupp. Frame grabs by Morgan Maassen.

Freddie Meadows

Andrew Cotton

On the following set, Nic swung me into the second wave, and I remember feeling like
I let the rope go a little early. I tried to skate into it, but I lost my momentum halfway down the face. The board nosedived as I got to the flats, and I instantly lost the straps and started to skip on my flotation. I realized I was in the path of Rán, a position I’d been having nightmares about for the last decade. 

In some of my dreams, Rán is a mountain, and it’s static. In others, Rán is an abyss of water that I’m swimming in. There is no life—just a huge hole and an underwater hall, filled with every shade of blue. Sometimes it’s a wave, and I can be out there, and it’s huge, and as the sets are coming in, my family paddles out. Other times I’m underwater, and it’s rumbling over me. 

My first feeling as I fell was of being back in that last moment. It was happening to me, what I’d dreamt. Somehow I went into an extremely relaxed place, which was so strange to me. I went over with the lip and was pulled to the bottom. I was deep, moving swiftly along, hitting the reef, but not hard, almost gently. Then I went off the edge at the end of the reef and down the waterfall Cotty had been pulled into. 

It felt like I was being taught a motherly lesson, or like I was receiving a motherly punishment. In a way, perhaps, it felt like our Nordic traditions of interacting with ancient spirits, or ancestors, or gods. I had a sense I was being cared for, and I felt an immense affinity in return. I didn’t meet Rán in the waves I’d caught. I met Rán at the bottom of the ocean. 

When I reached the surface, I wasn’t even out of breath. I could see that Nic wouldn’t be able to get to me before the next wave, so I went under. I got rumbled again but felt once more a sort of calmness and appreciation. I took a third wave on the head, and then Nic picked me up, saying he thought he’d lost me. 

Once I was on the back of the ski, sitting in the channel, the experience began hardening. Nic and I spoke for a little while. He said, very gently, “Look, no pressure, but I really do think it’s a good thing if we get one more…” He was trying to suggest I should get back on the horse. It seemed to me like everything that had happened was supposed to happen, and had already happened, so I didn’t need another wave, but I wanted one. 

The last wave I took was smaller, more like one of the perfect tubes I’d caught earlier. Once we got to shore, I was overcome. I thought about the storm and the swell, the years that had passed, and everything converging for those few hours. I’d been waiting a long time for all of it. I’d finally come face to face with Rán.

[Feature image by Magnus Nordmo]