Travel to the North with us, Helsinki, Finland to be exact. No, we are not showing you Jaakko Ojanen, Arto Saari, or even Eniz Fazliov today (maybe sooner rather than later though 😉 but instead you get to meet Victor Höglund and his crew of young up & comers. Some unknown or some people who you might know like Olli Lilja, Kusti Kauppinen, Eetu Toropainen & Aatsi Suovaara. Suomi is having a moment and the coming weeks at Place will show you just how strong that momentum is. For now, let’s give the metaphorical MIC to Victor and let’s hear what he has to say about the newest Place Presents: Scrappy.
Intro & Interview by Roland Hoogwater.
Film & Edit by Victor Höglund.
Hey Victor, tell us a bit about who you are and how scrappy happened. How did it start and how many vol. will there be?
Well, My name is Victor Höglund, I’m 22 years old and I currently live in Helsinki, Finland. My main motivation for starting this project was that I wanted to film a part with Aleksanteri Luostari whom I used to film a lot with back in the day when we both still lived in Vaasa, the city where we are originally from. Aleksanteri moved to Helsinki a couple of years before me and hadn’t really filmed much since that. So we started going out with him in the spring and I just filmed him and whoever joined the sessions and then it slowly turned into Scrappy. I don’t have plans to do more volumes of this project but maybe I’ll do something else in the future.
How long have you been filming and what do you enjoy about it?
I started filming pretty much at the same time as I started skating, so that would be in 2010. In 2021 I took my first break from filming since I started because I was really tired of it and wanted to focus more on skating myself. Even though the break only lasted for a year it made me enjoy filming again. What I enjoy about it, is hanging out with friends and of course, you always get a good feeling when you capture your friends doing something cool.
Who is in this video and what is it like filming with them?
The main guys I went out with for this video were Aleksanteri Luostari, Onni Saltevo, Olli Lilja, Samuli Saastamoinen, Jukka Koskinen, and Marcel Aiha but it also features a bunch more of my friends. Filming for this video was pretty easy and fun since it wasn’t that serious at any point and my friends are really good at skating so it wasn’t very hard to get clips. The only one that I needed to push a bit was Aleksanteri, he would give up on his tricks after like 15 minutes and start talking about how easy it was to get clips when we were kids haha.
“He broke pretty much everyone’s board and just couldn’t stand up on it even though he landed on it like 20 times…”
What can we expect from you in the future?
Well, there is a new Troposphere video coming out soon and I’ll have a part in that. As far as filming goes I think I’ll chill with it for a bit and focus more on skating in front of the camera but at some point, I’ll probably start a new project.
How did you stumble upon Place and why did you feel it would be a good fit for you?
I think the first time I heard of Place was a few years ago when you guys dropped the “Place presents: Malmö“, I remember Amandus Mortensen doing a kickflip hippy jump and rolling into a bike in that video haha. I thought Place would be a good fit for Scrappy since you guys seem to like to showcase smaller scenes that not a lot of people know about.
Who’s work inspires you inside or outside of skateboarding currently and in the past?
I don’t really draw inspiration from any specific work, I guess I just get inspired by my friends.
Any stories from Scrappy that would be interesting to share?
I guess a funny story to share would be when Aleksanteri tried the Heelflip down the 10-stair which is his ender. He had a really hard time trying that one, he broke pretty much everyone’s board and just couldn’t stand up on it even though he landed on it like 20 times. It even started raining at one point and as we were packing to leave it stopped so he kept trying to do it. Joel Juuso made a bet for a brand new board on the try he finally landed but I’m not sure he ever gave it to Aleksanteri (laughs)…
(Laughs) Well, Victor thank you for this talk and hope to see more in the future.
Thank you for hosting as well and keep in touch.