'Mischief' And His Secret Location...

Ali Hutchens and Jim Wennmark relive an epic journey deep into the Artic Circle in search of Loki, the god of mischief…

In 2016, my fishing buddy Jim Wennmark from Two Nations Fly Fishing and I sat down in Norway and discussed our next “adventure”. We always mulled over the idea of heading off to a remote location to fish for salmon, but our dreams and expectations never even came close to what we had let ourselves in for! We discussed various locations and talked about making our next film to follow up from “Passion Breaks Borders”, filmed in Nord Kringen on the River Stjordal, Norway. What we came up with took us both by surprise. We always talked about our ethos of making films about the experience of fishing, and not merely about catching fish. This set us an added challenge of how to make our film and our own adventure a trip of a lifetime that others could genuinely relate to.

Hunting The Elusive King Of Fish

Jim and I discussed a theme for the film and decided that our Norse roots were strong and had formed part of who we were, in relation to the adventures we seek and the thrill of hunting for an elusive king of fish. We decided that our film would be based on a Viking Norse legend, of the god of mischief – Loki.

Loki had the ability to shape shift to evade detection when he had committed unthinkable acts. One of his adopted shapes was that of a salmon. The legend tells us that Loki had fled from Asgard (the Norse equivalent of heaven for warriors) after the gods decided to try and capture him for contriving the death of a giant. Loki fled to a high mountain and hid, turning himself into a salmon by day and hiding behind a secret waterfall to evade capture by the gods.