There’s already a healthy crowd milling about inside Hof, Akureyri’s high-ceilinged cultural centre, waiting to be let into the auditorium to spend an evening watching hard bodies flexed. The crowd itself is the most muscular audience anywhere in Iceland, composed of bodybuilders (off duty), ex-bodybuilders, families of bodybuilders, friends of bodybuilders, and coaches of bodybuilders. The standard male greeting is the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Carl Weathers arm-wrestling handshake from Predator. Everyone seems to know each other already.
Some competitors come out to greet the crowd. You can tell who’s competing by their face. Angular from months of hard dieting, spray-tan browned, a borderline blackface. They’re a little too energetic, seemingly excited and nervous about being onstage soon, distracting themselves by coming out from backstage to mingle with their friends and family, many of whom have driven the five hours from Reykjavík to Akureyri to support them. Finally, we go into the auditorium.
The eight judges sit up front with their legs crossed, three men, five women, all dressed in blazers. Lined up like this, they look serious and official, which is doubtless the intended effect. Judges turn a bodybuilding show into a bodybuilding competition. They assess the contestants based on muscular development, posing skill, and symmetry. Throughout the show they’ll gravely jot down points, assess tricep development, judge the curve of a quad sweep, eye the bulge of a buttock. Tonight they’ll be judging 31 contestants, competing across 12 categories.
I’d been given the go-ahead to wander around backstage, so there I am, huddled into a nook with a notepad, when the first batch of contestants line up by the stage entrance, seven men, barefoot, in long swimming trunks. I feel like a pool attendant, overdressed amongst these backs and abs. The seven of them are fresh meat for the Men’s Physique category, where the competitors are judged on upper body development and on their “V-taper” — wide shoulders and back, a thin waist and jagged abs.
They’re silent, a bit on edge, as they wait to be called on stage. It reminds me of that scene in Gladiator where fresh slaves are about to fight for the first time. But it’s not that serious, really, and instead of waiting scared, they work on maintaining a good pump with exercise-band lat raises, kettlebell rows, bodyweight push-ups. One guy crouches over a fellow contestant’s lower back, fixing some spray-tan malfunction.
I feel a surge of unearned pride watching them head out onto the stage, hard, Spartan-abbed, comrades in muscularity.
The MC finally comes over, saying, “You ready boys? Good luck and enjoy yourselves today!” and suddenly they’re switched on, hyped up, and someone says, “Let’s go boys” in English, and in they go, one at a time as the MC introduces them. I feel a surge of unearned pride watching them head out onto the stage, hard, Spartan-abbed, comrades in muscularity.
The Men’s Physique competitors aren’t so muscle-bound as to be off-putting to the non-aficionado. They’re still within some socially acceptable level of muscularity. The same cannot be said of the Men’s Bodybuilding category, which seems to be designed to figure out how much muscle a human body can physically carry. These guys have lived in the gym for the last 10, 15 years, grunting, lifting, thinking about lifting when they’re not actually lifting. At times eating for two or three, sometimes borderline starving.
They want to be beastlike. That’s the whole point of being 100-plus kilos of pure muscle. They want to be the biggest guy in any room they walk into, including this one. They go trampling onto the stage, and it’s like the running of the bulls, except nobody is running, and they’re not bulls, so no, it isn’t really, but the power is definitely there. Directed by an official they begin to hit their poses in unison. Front lat spread. Most muscular. Double biceps.
Vikings awaken
Gummi Emil, a 27-year-old personal trainer and social media celebrity in Iceland, brings a guttural energy to the contest, screaming at irregular intervals. The crowd is at first unsure about the noise, but then they get into it in a big way, clapping and whistling and yelling back. The noise feels appropriate. In comparison with this showmanship, the subsequent posing, silent and professional, felt a little eerie. Gummi Emil is sweating. His spray tan leaks down his shoulders and upper back and between his pecs, like a too-liberally applied coat of paint, and although this is a faux pas that might reduce his chances of winning, he also kind of looks like he’s freshly covered with blood, and it adds to the general effect of manhood unleashed.
His spray tan leaks down his shoulders and upper back and between his pecs, like a too-liberally applied coat of paint, and although this is a faux pas that might reduce his chances of winning, he also kind of looks like he’s freshly covered with blood, and it adds to the general effect of manhood unleashed.
Gummi Emil is hard to explain. He’s both a spiritualist and a hypermasculine fitness influencer. When he runs marathons he prefers to go barefoot and bare-chested, staying in full contact with earth and sun. Recently he’s become a steady source of cheap clicks for Icelandic media. In September 2024, he was arrested for walking naked on a highway, stopping cars, high on shrooms after trying to plumb the depths of his inner man.
Last autumn, during the filming of a music video, he fell off a horse whilst holding sword and shield, and after being accused of animal cruelty he issued an explanation which included the fact that he had apologised to the horse and that he’d been forgiven by it. In December he was questioned by police in relation to a picture on his Instagram, where he posed with a rifle in one hand and a shotgun in the other. A noticeable trouser bulge completing the triad of hard virility. Recently he trademarked his memetically charged catchphrase “Víkingar vakna” — Vikings awaken, seemingly intent on using it as a brand name for his health supplements.
Categories of one
Three categories only have one contestant. Men’s 40+ Bodybuilding has Aðalsteinn Kjartansson, a 60-year-old who looks extremely good for his age, it has to be said. Women’s Bodybuilding features Hildigunnur Borga Gunnarsdóttir — “Amazing back!” someone yells out as she holds a back lat spread. Men’s Teenage Bodybuilding has Stefán Bjarki Óttarsson, age 17, who seems to be having the best day of his life, basking in the adulation and the general atmosphere. That they all took the stage on their own and posed in front of an audience was laudable in and of itself. It felt right that they all got first-place trophies.
Last autumn, during the filming of a music video, he fell off a horse whilst holding sword and shield, and after being accused of animal cruelty he issued an explanation which included the fact that he had apologised to the horse and that he’d been forgiven by it.
(All these different categories and age brackets led to confusion later in the evening, when a photographer for the newspaper Morgunblaðið came by to get pictures, and asked the organisers for the male and female winners, expecting two people. He ended up taking a group photo of 10 people, almost a third of the contestants.)
It’s time for Model Fitness, also known as Bikini Fitness. A category that emphasises some muscularity but also “softer lines” and “toned physiques.” The women come strutting in in high heels (not barefoot like the men), “Hot Stuff” playing, in sparkling tops, extravagant earrings dangling and matching lipstick. They switch poses in smooth ladylike motions, complete with hair flops and blown kisses, a comically feminine counterpoint to all the yelling and testosterone of the Men’s Bodybuilding category. And you know what? They’re dazzling. Thick-legged and six-packed, sturdy-feminine, displaying a kind of country-girl strength, and I’m almost a little schoolboyishly shy about gawking, feeling that it was in some unclear way a bit rude to stare even in this unusual setting. Not that this had been a problem with the guys, where I’d felt comfortable appraising muscle in the detached fashion some men deploy when assessing vintage cars or North Sea trawlers.
There’s a 20-minute break before they announce the winners. The crowd shuffles out. Outside the auditorium contestants talk to their friends, partners and parents. They hold their kids and get nice pictures taken with everyone flexing and smiling. Gummi Emil is alone by the exit looking at his phone. When I talk to him he surprises me by not mentioning man’s connection to nature, or shrooms or Vikings awakening but about how he’d like to see more women competing. He’d competed two times before. Once every five years. “I think the sport will get more popular,” he said, “It’s just so good. You learn so fucking much about how your mind works, and about the body, and a load else just from competing.” For someone who just spent the last half hour screaming and posing in a berserker trance he’s remarkably meek and pleasant, here in the lobby, one on one.
A lament
At one point in the night, bodybuilding hero Sigurkarl Aðalsteinsson was pulled out of the audience by the MC to say a few words, seemingly off the cuff. He’s a man in his early 60s and carries himself with the total confidence of someone with nothing left to prove. He started off by complimenting the show, almost as throat clearing, and then launched into his real point. A lament, saying how this is just not enough, that the sport is dying and that “we all”, everyone in this room, should work to promote the sport. This was the third time tonight I’d heard someone talk about the decline of the sport. Someone had told me that shows like this used to have more like 200 contestants.
This was the third time tonight I’d heard someone talk about the decline of the sport. Someone had told me that shows like this used to have more like 200 contestants.
The crowd clapped in agreement. It felt good to hear something put so straight. It was sad to see a sport peter out into a state where the number of trophies almost equalled the number of contestants and where people competed only against themselves.
It’s an odd time for bodybuilding competitions to be at a low ebb. Bodybuilding training has probably never been as popular, with gyms overflowing with men and women trying to get a little more muscular.
Social media has to have something to do with it. There’s no need to wait for a bodybuilding competition to show off your body anymore. You won’t need to face literal judges on Instagram, you just post a nice photo, and you get praised. Still, are notifications and likes anywhere near the same quality as honest-to-God, in-person claps and whistling? Watching Stefán Bjarki, the only contestant in the Men’s Teenage Bodybuilding category, get cheered on and explode in confidence was heartening. It seemed obvious that this was just the beginning for him. He’d continue growing and competing for a long time to come. I doubt he’d get the same kick from posting some pictures online.
Bodybuilding shows like this turn an isolated activity into a communal sport. The 31 competitors had bulked and cut around the same time, left off the carbs around the same time and waited in the wings together, fixed each other’s spray tan, and showed off what they’d built for the last 12 months, and their whole lives, together.
Yet the whole thing was, undeniably, a bit weird. I personally couldn’t get over the spray tan. By the end of the night parts of the backstage floor were sticky. Once, opening a door, I felt that the handle was moist with accumulated tan. Under these conditions it did not seem impossible to get a second-hand tan. The tan is, to me, too reminiscent of the gel-haired era of early 2000s Selfoss. When I asked Jakob Ingvarsson, a former competitor and coach of two contestants, whether you could compete without applying a tan he said it could theoretically be done, but that it simply wasn’t done.
Champions crowned
Every place in every category was announced in reverse order. If you were dead last you knew it, and you knew it right away. The man in eighth place is… Weakass Weaksson and a woman walks across the stage and the attention lingers on you. The other contestants politely clap while you get handed the medal of shame. If you avoid the lower rankings and end up in third place or higher you get a proper trophy to take home. With the abundant categories there were almost as many trophies as there were contestants. By the end of the night Adrian Romanowski, first-place winner in Men’s Teenage Physique (not to be confused with Men’s Teenage Bodybuilding) and third place in Men’s Physique, was walking about with a trophy in each hand, a strikingly good look.
Eventually they announce the winners for Men’s Bodybuilding. The last two standing are Gummi Emil, social media influencer, and Sæmundur Freyr Erlendsson, personal trainer and veteran competitor, who could easily be cast as an early 20th-century circus strongman, all moustache and eyes. The MC lets the tension simmer, saying that the decision between the two had been extremely close. Finally the moment comes: Sæmundur wins. Gummi Emil looks pained, but they shake hands. Someone suggests a celebratory “posedown.” All the contestants head up to the edge of the stage and hit poses freestyle, creating a helter-skelter mass of bones and muscle and striations, made the more impressive from where I stand by how the tensed bodies meld together into a complex mass. And they go all-in while the audience claps in beat to the music. In the tangle of limbs and skin Gummi Emil yells again – a wounded animal scream – and then he calls out, “We’re all… winners.” This is met with claps and cheers. “Guðmundur is right,” says the MC, soothingly. Gummi Emil then says, “It’s a question of what you yourself think. That’s what matters.”
In the days that followed Gummi Emil began posting online. He said he’d been robbed of the first-place title by bad judging. That they didn’t want to give him the win. He began claiming that he was the real winner. According to Sæmundur, Gummi Emil messaged him privately, demanding the first-place trophy he felt he deserved.
