The multi-tal­ented Sölvi Fan­nar Viðar­s­son has re­cently re­turned from a trip where, among other ad­ven­tures, he was the first Ice­landic man to com­pete in MAS (Siber­ian) wrestling, and where bet­ter to start than the world cham­pi­onship? Sölvi only had around twenty min­utes to get him­self ac­quainted with the sport be­fore the meet but says, still he fared bet­ter than he had ever dared dream of.

The com­pe­ti­tion was held on No­vem­ber 29. and 30. in Yakutsk, the cap­i­tal of Yaku­tia (the Sakha Re­pub­lic) in Siberia, Russ­ian fed­er­a­tion. Also com­pet­ing on be­half of Ice­land was strong-woman Þóra Þorsteins­dót­tir but ac­com­pa­ny­ing them were four times worlds strongest man, Mag­nús Ver Mag­nús­son, the Yakut­ian Maria Shishig­ina-Páls­son and pho­tog­ra­pher Eva Björk Ægis­dót­tir.

A very tech­ni­cal sport

Sölvi says he was asked to find strong can­di­dates for tak­ing part in the com­pe­ti­tion on be­half of Ice­land. "I con­tacted those I thought would do well but have to ad­mit it's a lit­tle hard to eval­u­ate this sport since I had never seen it be­fore and I be­lieve to be one of those sports where you ac­tu­ally have to try it your­self to ap­pre­ci­ate it," he said. In the end he de­cided to take the leap him­self.

 

 

 

Two times Ice­land's strongest woman, Þóra Þorsteins­dót­tir wres­tles with her op­po­nent from Kyr­gyz­tan, with Maria Shishig­ina-Páls­son sup­port­ing her with Ice­landic flag in hand, in the back. mbl.is/​Eva Björk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"To find out that this is not at all a sport only for men made me very happy as we have sev­eral very strong fe­male ath­letes from Ice­land, on the con­trary, there were top notch fe­male ath­letes, in seven weight classes, as with the men, that were wrestling, push­ing their bod­ies to­wards the ex­treme but to my sur­prise it was not nec­es­sar­ily the heav­i­est com­peti­tor in each weight cat­e­gory that won, but that just tells us how tech­ni­cal this sport re­ally is."

"Whin­ing gets you nowhere!"

Sölvi says he made the de­ci­sion to com­pete only about half a month be­fore the world cham­pi­onship. Since we had no equip­ment to prac­tice MAS wrestling in Ice­land, he says he did var­i­ous ex­er­cises to pre­pare his body as well as he could. "When the very long trip to Yaku­tia was be­hind us we got around a 20 minute les­son from a very good trainer, as to how to mas­ter this very in­ter­est­ing sport. That is nat­u­rally not a lot of time, but whin­ing gets you nowhere! You just have to go out there and do your best."

He says that it went much bet­ter than he had dared hope, yet says that there were mis­takes made that af­fected his per­for­mance. "I had no idea that it was my turn and was still warm­ing up and prepar­ing. So I lit­er­ally ran, out of breath, tear­ing off my clothes on my way to the ring be­cause I was told that my op­po­nent and not less the ref­eree were wait­ing for me. Even though it was a lit­tle un­pleas­ant to take part in this sport with a raspy dry breath for the first time, it was still fan­tas­tic to get to com­pete, es­pe­cially in the world cham­pi­onship.

Sölvi's op­po­nent was Sergey Frol­kin. "He won the bronze medal in the world cham­pi­onship in my weight class (-105 kg/​231 lbs) but I still put up a good fight."

Sölvi says that the re­sponse was a good one, af­ter (this) his first com­pe­ti­tion. "I was ap­proached by of­fi­cials from the com­pe­ti­tion and they had some­how heard that there had not been a lot of time, on my be­half, for prepa­ra­tion in this de­mand­ing sport and mo­ti­vated me a lot by say­ing that I could place in the top three places if I were to prac­tice the sport un­til the next com­pe­ti­tion. Yes, I will most def­i­nitely com­pete again in Siber­ian MAS wrestling."

Played the jaw harp for the pres­i­dent of the Sakha Re­pub­lic

Sölvi en­coun­tered many ad­ven­tures dur­ing his trip, but be­sides com­pet­ing at the world cham­pi­onship he got to meet with the pres­i­dent of Yaku­tia, Egor Afanasye­vich Borisov. "The meet­ing with Egor lasted for 70 min­utes, much longer than in­tended, and we dis­cussed many im­por­tant sub­jects, some of them that will hope­fully strengthen Yaku­ti­a's tourism as well as more firmly con­nect Ice­land and the Sakha Re­pub­lic in the fu­ture."

The jaw harp is the Yakut­ian na­tional mu­sic in­stru­ment and Sölvi got to play it for the pres­i­dent, an ex­pe­ri­ence that he said was not less stress­ful than com­pet­ing in the world cham­pi­onship. "The pres­i­dent had been told I had just bought a jaw harp and he asked me to play it. Just as with the world cham­pi­onship I went with it and did my best, and most likely sur­prised my­self the most by a de­cent per­for­mance."

Sölvi was also in­vited to do two TV in­ter­views, news­pa­per in­ter­views as well as be­ing asked to be one of the judges in Miss Yaku­tia. "That was fan­tas­tic. And such an in­cred­i­ble co­in­ci­dence that the beau­ti­ful woman we crowned Miss Yaku­tia, is ac­tu­ally Sergey Frol­k­in's sis­ter, whom I wres­tled with at the world cham­pi­onship, truly a small world."