Meeting Earth's Strongest Men at the Top of the World

Iceland is an incredible country, a place like no other. A tiny black rock that sits in the middle of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, it's a brutal otherworld, a Tolkienesque paradise where you get beat up in bars if you say you don't believe in fairies. A place that sees 22 hours of light in the summer, and similar levels of darkness in the winter.

The population hovers just above the 300,000 mark, and the climate and landscape makes much of the country almost completely uninhabitable. Despite this, it has long punched above its weight when placed on the world stage. Björk, geysers, Eidur Gudjohnsen, and internet freedoms aside, Iceland's most impressive reputation comes from the World's Strongest Man competition.

The small island has given us some of the competition's greatest legends, including two men who've been crowned the strongest man on the planet four times over: Jon Pall Sigmarsson and Magnus Ver Magnusson, as well as countless other record holders and internationally famous strongmen. In a country where half the population is estimated to have eaten at the same dog bar in Reykjavík, such a reputation is bound to have an effect on the nation's culture as a whole.

Pall "the Square Meter" Logason, so called because of his height-to-width ratio

I recently traveled to Iceland to make Nest of Giants, a VICE film about the world these strongmen inhabit. While we were there, we became well aware of the lineage at play. It stretches back generations, and has bred some of the strongest people who have ever lived.

The epicenter of the scene is a gym called Jakabol, which translates to "Nest of the Giants." It's like no other gym you've ever been to, probably because its members are training to lift cars. There is no steam room, pilates class, or cafeteria at Jakabol. While there are a smattering of treadmills and cross trainers around the place, there is only one goal here, and that is the building of pure, unadulterated strength.

Looking more like a branch of Jewson than a Virgin Active, the place was designed by Ver Magnusson to be "as hardcore as possible." The main room is littered with objects that are usually used to keep ships in place, objects that are found on building sites, objects that you'll spend your whole life training just to get off the ground, objects that weigh twice as much as the average male but are designed to be lifted with one hand.

220-pound "circus dumbells" at Jakabol

The kind of death metal that gets blamed for church burnings blares from the tiny stereo, as some of the biggest guys you'll ever see get to work. The sound of heaving and clanging fills the cold air constantly, as it becomes damp with condensing sweat.

Jakabol is a place that is designed to keep fairweather strongmen away. There's a sign on the wall that translates to "no pussies." Looking around, it seems to be a rule that is closely abided.

Ari Gunnarsson training at Jakabol

While the gym is currently run by Ver Magnusson, it actually started out as the child of the other great legend of Icelandic strength, Jon Pall Sigmarsson. Magnus took over when Jon Pall died of a ruptured aorta in the gym, aged just 32. Ever since, Jakabol has gained a kind of mythical status—though, given its location in a supermarket parking lot on the outskirts of the capital, you wouldn't really know it.

Magnus is a man with a hard reputation; one source told us that he once ruined an enemy's vintage whiskey by pouring water in it, and we'd heard him described as a "total bastard." But when we met him, he proved to be a likable and romantic soul, a man whose main aim was helping the guys in his gym to be the best they could possibly be.

Magnus Ver Magnusson in business mode

The star of Jakabol, and Magnus's proudest son, is Hafthor "Thor" Bjornsson, the strongest man in Iceland and the third strongest in the world. Hafthor was always a big guy, and having excelled at basketball in his youth, he decided to take up strength training when a knee injury ended his hopes of reaching the NBA. At 6-foot 9 and 418 pounds, he's a Norse God of a man, albeit one whose temperament fits with his modest countryside upbringing.

Last year, Hafthor was invited to appear in Game of Thrones. Predictably, he plays a giant. Undoubtedly the star of Iceland's famous world of strength, Hafthor is a national celebrity who is flown around the world to exhibit his ridiculous body at various competitions, and he has designs to do more acting in the future.

Hafthor Bjornsson getting a tattoo of his daughter's face on his forearm

During competitive seasons, Thor eats between 8,000-10,000 calories a day to fuel muscle growth. I asked whether this is tough for him, because I can't even begin to visualize what 10,000 calories must look like. "It's tough because it affects my social life," he says. "It's difficult when you have to eat every two hours; it limits what you are able to do." I ask him if he drinks alcohol: "Yeah, every now and then. Probably about twice a year…"

Being a strongman is a demanding business—demanding of your health, your finances, and your social life. Many of them have first, second, and third jobs. Most of them work as bouncers, a job that they all seem to hate. Ari works at a swimming pool, Pall sells fridges, and Stefan works at a mental health center. Only Hafthor is fully pro, and for that reason, he doesn't get to see his family very often.

Clive with some Jakabol regulars

Even for the non-pros, this can be a hobby that takes over your entire life. There are, of course, a number of concerns surrounding it. Firstly, there is the worry that human bodies simply aren't designed to be lifting the kind of weights that these guys do. There are debates about whether the ridiculous amounts of food, and the sheer size of their bodies, are dangerous for the heart, and then there's the strain that being so big puts on your knees. Many of the guys we met struggled with recurring injuries and had been forced to take long periods off training.

But of course there's one aspect of all this that is more controversial than any other: steroids.

The world's third strongest man having a quiet moment

What most people don't know is that most strongman competitions don't check for steroids, and because of this the use of them goes on as an open secret within the sport. None of the guys we spoke to would tell us whether they took them or not, but there did seem to be some uncharacteristically uneasy exchanges when the subject was brought up.

Solvi Fannar, agent to the strongmen and a trained physician, said that steroids were in fact more of a moral choice than a legal or even medical one. He pointed out that most of the strongmen from the golden era of steroid-taking (the 80s and 90s) were still alive, and he suggested that despite the controversial death of Jon Pall Sigmarsson, steroids are safer than people let on. They're also still legal within the sport, placing the decision to take them or not squarely on the conscience of the competitor.

Ari shows us his tats; the date in the cross marks the suicide of his brother

But whatever the story with steroids, we didn't see any traces of 'roid rage from the guys. In fact, they were some of the most decent, humble, and sensitive human beings you could possibly hope to meet. Much like the country they hail from, the strongmen of Iceland are rock-hard on the surface but full of warmth beneath.

Iceland is a country where it's almost impossible to live for much of the year, and the people who live there now are the blood descendants of the Vikings who first came to this tiny black rock more than a millennium ago. The strongmen of Iceland are a people with nothing to prove, and because of this, the arrogance and brutality associated with so many other tough guys just isn't there. They are hard; life is hard; they have no need to treat anyone badly. The story of the Nest of Giants is an astonishing, generation-spanning tale of adversity, tragedy, and the kind of physicality that'll make you believe man can do anything.

Our new film, Nest of Giants, premieres at VICE.com this Monday, March 10.

Follow Clive Martin on Twitter.