Originally published in our latest print volume, available here.

I was supposed to go home. I had a flight booked and my crew was leaving, but it was staying cold, more snow was in the forecast and the snowboarding community was going to work on the streets of Oslo, Norway. I figured this was a right place, right time kind of deal, so I booked myself a cheap one-bed apartment and a weeklong ticket for public transport, then took the train in the opposite direction of the airport. I didn’t have a solid plan, but I thought I’d probably be able to figure things out as I went.

There isn’t enough space in this magazine to tell you absolutely everything that happened or show you all of the photographs I took, so you’re going to get snippets from each day and will just have to imagine me roaming around Oslo, trying to create opportunities while navigating blizzards, subway shutdowns, snowboard politics, orange fur, unnecessarily large bags of candy, crew drama, frozen batteries, injuries, sexual sculptures, knives, homeless people in the corridors and average temperatures of -20∞C. 

Sunday

My Uber took about 30 minutes to get to the spot from the center of town. As I pulled up, I saw Tommy Gesme and Robby Meehan run a bungee across the street, then Jill Perkins shoot back in the other direction and out of sight behind a building. I got straight into the stairs with Justin Meyer and briefly tripped out on the fact that I was crouched next to the man who made Videograss, the first street movie I ever saw and loved, but Jill was strapped in again, so those thoughts got pushed aside and we got to shooting. The session was brief and businesslike, with Jill doing exactly what she needed without any extra fuss.

Later that evening, while eating with the rest of the VG crew, I discovered that spot anxiety was running high. I realized as I was being interrogated about who’s done what at which spot by Parrish Isaacs that I was in a unique position to middleman useful information between the crews. Justin didn’t seem so bothered and fell asleep opposite me.

Monday 

The spot required a roof climb, but of course they didn’t ask for permission. That’s not this crew’s style. Ivika Jürgensen didn’t rush, though, and took her time icing the ledge and easing into things. My angle anxiety was flaring, and I wished I had a second camera I could trigger remotely, but it took her a few tries to get a clean landing, so I had the chance to move around a bit before she rode away. One last trip up to the roof was needed to retrieve her shovel, and she figured she might as well try one more hit. As she was strapping in, the cops came around the corner and started yelling. Amidst increasingly louder shouts of “Nei!” she dropped and laced another one. They were pretty pissed, but they eventually calmed down when they realized we weren’t just children playing on the roof. (Thinking about it, that’s exactly what we were.) I learned later that Riley Nickerson had asked the staff if they were cool with him climbing on their roof, and they were totally chill about it, which shows that sometimes it’s worth just asking.

Tuesday

This spot was next to a semi-busy train station with a name that looks like “Foreskin Parking.” It would only be a Dom [LAST NAME] session with some unnecessary hassle, and he decided to time his drop with the arrival of a tram and even more pedestrians so the clip would look more “urban.” It took a while, but he got it, and I have to admit that the clip does look cooler. Dom, I love you, but also, fuck you. 

Wednesday

The Oslo Opera House is normally an instant kick, but Fridtjof Sæther Tischendorf (aka Fridge) had somehow arranged permission for people to ride it and also got the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) to come and cover it for TV and radio. Sparrow Knox hijacked the radio broadcast by grabbing the microphone and interviewing Dillon Henricksen, who pretended to be his brother, Dusty, and said he’d won X Games medals. Despite the permission, we still got kicked out. Danny Larsen wrote to tell me he’d seen us on TV and that I seemed like the one adult among the group. Thanks, Danny—I think.

The next few hours were spent wandering around downtown and trying to keep up with Sparrow as he jumped on and off things without building a single landing or takeoff. As you can see from this slightly blurry and poorly framed photo, I barely had time to turn my camera on before he hopped into this ledge. This entire day was so fun—just wandering around a city with my friends and seeing what we encountered. No real plans or expectations—just enjoying the snow like kids instead of spending an entire day suffering for a single clip.

Thursday 

The crew had shoveled this Moroccan-looking spot the previous evening, and I barely had time to get my gear set up and my angle figured out before Reid dropped in. In less than 10 tries, he rode away clean. Some clips just come quickly, and I’m stoked with the photo we got. As we drove off, he got flashed by a camera for driving through a red light. We weren’t sure how much the ticket would cost, but it’s Norway, so we suspected it would be a lot.

Due to an unlucky slam on Jill’s next spot, I hopped crews and linked with Freddy Perry and Markus Rustad at the harbor, where Markus was fighting a pretty fucked-up drop into a bank. Einar, a homie of Markus, was already shooting photos, and although they didn’t mind me shooting a second angle, I thought it would be cooler if his shot was printed here instead of mine. We rode the trams back into town, complete with shovels, pushers and confused looks from the other passengers. This felt like a genuine Oslo street experience, and I was stoked to have linked up with the locals to see how they do things.

My day didn’t end here, however. After another dinner with VG and the remainder of the Salomon crew, Justin Phipps and I returned to a spot where he’d filmed a few days before. Due to natural speed and him being an insanely talented snowboarder, I got to shoot every angle I wanted of one of the most proper backside wallrides I’ve ever seen. Full contact all the way and just a little bit over-vert. So good.

Friday 

This monster of a spot is honestly hard to describe in a single sentence. It’s a curved down-flat-down ledge that goes into a flat-down-flat rail and then to a double-section rail. The sections are higher than the final down, so it requires a final full-speed ollie to make it over them. I think of it as Kas Lemmens’ roller coaster, and it was a three-day battle for him. I hope for their sake that the maintenance guy responsible for this area never tracks this tool-wielding crew down. 

//outro//

So, that was a glimpse into my bonus week in the streets. I’m sociable but also kind of solitary. I like my own space and doing things on my own schedule, and that’s exactly what I did in Oslo. Big up to all the snowboarders who were down for me to join their sessions and also tolerated me turning up to their finished spots, shooting and then leaving without doing too much shoveling. I took a chance by staying longer in Oslo with no guarantee of financial return, but I didn’t do this for the money. I love shooting snowboarding, and I saw an opportunity to link up with some of the best to do it. Even if I end up in the red, this week was worth it.