In Slow Motion

Two years ago, Finnish freediver Johanna Nordblad dived 338 feet beneath an ice sheet on just a single breath—farther than anyone before. In this cold, dark, underwater world, it's the 47-year-old's lack of speed that's become her greatest strength.

- KARIN CERNY 

Ice diver Johanna Nordblad sits on a frozen lake in her swimwear. The ice hole in front of her reveals dark, threatening-looking water beneath a 24-inch-thick rim of solid ice. The air is 19°F, the water about 35°F. It’s not easy to even imagine slipping slowly beneath the ice into this unknown environment, to dive the full length of a soccer field with just the oxygen that’s in your lungs. But this is what the Finn did on this day in March 2021, setting a new world record in the process. No man or woman has ever dived farther beneath the ice without an oxygen tank: 103 meters, or about 338 feet, on a single breath. No flippers. No wetsuit.

“I took it to the absolute limit.”

Nordblad knew that diving into this hostile world for almost three minutes would push her to the very edge of what is humanly possible. It’s why the makers of the Netflix documentary Hold Your Breath: The Ice Dive tailed the extreme diver for more than a year, capturing her self-doubt, training and willpower in twilight-blue images of a world of ice and snow.

“It’s eerie trying to set that type of record, because there is no background data to go on,” says Nordblad now. The 47-year-old freelance graphic designer lives in Helsinki—close to the water, of course. I took it to the absolute limit. From 80 meters on, it felt like my heart was only beating once an hour. The last few meters seemed to go on for days. I thought my heart was going to stop working.”

"Being slow is my way of dealing with this life-threatening challenge."