There's a legend in Iceland that 1000 years ago a guy called Orms fláttr Stórólfssonar (or Orm Storolfsson) put a 1400lbs/640kg mast on his back and took three steps with it. It endures as a heroic test of strength in the region, but this week a real man took up the challenge and kicked Orms' ass.

Hafthór Björnsson, who you'd recognise as The Mountain from the Game of Thrones series — and as an enormous human being of almost legendary proportions himself — put the weight on his back, picked it up, took five steps then celebrated.


It's impressive enough when you look at the weight involved, but even moreso when you consider this: while Orms was a real man who did indeed live in the 10th century, tales of his deeds have been passed down long enough to become legend, and as this book on Viking lore says, those feats (which included claims of fighting monsters) are "gross exaggerations and absurdities" and "almost entirely fiction".

So, likely bullshit.

And yet here we have a real human — albeit one who looks like he was grown in a super soldier factory — managing to actually do it.


Maybe next up he can pull a sword from a stone.