Elina Makinen, a 28-year-old TikTok user from Finland, has grown her 1.4 million follower fanbase on the platform by simply channeling her inner ice queen.
Makinen is big proponent of swimming in freezing cold icy lakes in her native land.
The real-life mermaid has spent the last decade of her life taking daily dips while Finland’s temperatures drop to even below -22 degrees Fahrenheit.
Makinen also moonlights as a tax adviser and lives in her hometown of Muonio.
Her blue-hued videos have amassed over 46 million likes and her clips show off her actually chilling out in the frozen waters of the region. Makinen spoke to Insider recently about her cool lifestyle and how ice swimming is a common pastime in the Nordic country.
“It can get boring just staying in the water and waiting for time to pass, so I thought it would be fun to start filming some videos. Doing these TikTok videos just came naturally,” Makinen said. She joined TikTok in 2019.
She added that Finland has their own swim clubs, however, during COVID, people just created their own swimming holes.
“There are ice swimming clubs, of course, where people can go, but many of them were closed because of Covid, and so people would just make their own ice holes and swim wherever they wanted,” she added.
She continued, “A lot of people on TikTok comment and ask me questions like, ‘Won’t you get hypothermia?’ or ‘How do you resist the cold?’ To them, this is crazy, but to Finnish people, it’s nothing.”
Makinen took her first icy swim with her family when she was just 5 years old. “My whole family loves ice swimming; it’s our bonding activity,” she said. “[I] think of it as our version of yoga or meditation, it’s for both peace of mind and an endorphin rush.”
She explained that her night swims relieve her stress and her morning dips “helps to get my blood circulation going, and makes me feel energized.” She usually only spends about 30 seconds to six minutes in the water.
“I keep it shorter when it’s too cold, even for me. When temperatures go below -25 degrees Celsius (-13 degrees Fahrenheit), I have to be careful not to get frostbite,” she cautioned.
Makinen revealed that she lets herself take a two-week break from the sport during the winter. While she also acknowledges the health benefits of ice swimming, she noted that it’s not for the faint of heart.
She said, “You definitely have to know yourself and your body. For me, it’s fine to shiver a bit. Other people like to sweat when they work out. I like the shiver.”