‘Strongland’ Is An Awfully Relaxing Documentary Series About Musclebound Men Who Lift Huge, Heavy Rocks

Sometimes a stone is more than a stone. Sometimes it’s a link to the past.

Strongland, a triptych of standalone documentary shorts available now on Netflix, looks at the long tradition of strongman sports in three of Europe’s oldest cultures — the Basque Country in northern Spain, the Highlands of Scotland, and Iceland. Ostensibly about the sport of lifting very heavy things, it goes deeper, and becomes a meditation on the persistence of culture and of sports’ place in telling the story of where you came from.

Eschewing any traditional voiceover narration, the films – titled separately as Levantadores, Stoneland, and Fullsterkur — are quiet, pleasant trips visits to beautiful, tradition-bound, mostly rural places. We’re not watching steroid-laden meatheads pushing iron in a gym, or oiled-up bodybuilders flexing for the cameras on a runway – we’re seeing people paying tribute to their ancestors through the most rudimentary and elemental of physical challenges.

“In the past, you had to be strong, you had to be tough, to stay here, in this land,” one subject notes shortly before hoisting a small boulder. He’s talking about Iceland, but the sentiment carries through each of the three films. “Scotland is some big rocks, a few lumps of coal, covered in grass,” another laughs. These strongman traditions didn’t start for recreation, for levity, for arrogance or pride — they were rooted in need. Stones were borne down mountainsides to build houses. They were hoisted by boys as a rite of passage into manhood; by fishermen proving their value to a boat’s crew; by members of a clan to prove their worth in defending their lands. You weren’t showing that you were the toughest in town to feed your own ego, but to demonstrate to your community that you could be counted on in times of need.

Viewed through a modern lens, it’s possible to see this as a relic of paternalistic machismo with its own set of problems. Modernity and technology have long since made such skills obsolete, or at least unnecessary — we can build houses without needing to hoist 100-kilogram stones by hand. Being the biggest and strongest man in town isn’t everything these days.

So why have these traditions persisted and been codified into sports? Looking at the three cultures depicted in this series, you can see a common thread, despite their geographic and linguistic divergence. They’re three cultures that have resisted tremendous external pressure, often threatened to the point of near-erasure. For centuries, the Scots have faced the prospect of being subsumed — not just politically, but culturally too — by the British. The Basque culture and language was officially banned during the decades-long reign of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco. Iceland, an lonely crag of volcanic rock isolated in a frigid ocean, seems determined to buck humanity straight off its back. Carrying forth these centuries-old traditions – traditions of survival in rough, hard places – is a basic, fundamental way of standing for a culture’s existence. “If you don’t use Euskara, it dies”, one man declares, referring to the Basque language. “Here we are, fighting for our sport, our language, everything.”

Amazingly, it’s not just the practice of the sport that has carried through – in many cases, it’s the implements themselves. We’re introduced to a number of famous stones — stones with their own names, like “Dinnie’s stones” or “Fullsterkur” (“Fully Strong”). These stones have taken on legendary status in their subcultures, the very same ones hoisted by competitors over the course of centuries. It’s a fun wrinkle to consider; when fans of mainstream sports argue about the relative merits of top competitors across eras — whether Babe Ruth was better than Mike Trout, for instance, or if LeBron James could beat Bill Russell one-on-one — it’s admittedly a wholly theoretical argument. Times change, the sports change, nothing remains static. In Scotland, however? You can prove your strength against Donald Dinnie by lifting the stones he became famous for.

Dinnie, one of the earliest global celebrities of the sports world, was a Scottish strongman who first made his name in 1860 by hoisting two boulders — weighing a combined 733 pounds — and carrying them the width of a bridge. Over 150 years later, we meet competitors in Scotland’s Highland Games attempting to prove their mettle by lifting those very same stones, something fewer than 100 people have ever been able to do.

Admittedly, these three films can run a bit long — the Basque episode is a relatively tight half-hour, but the Iceland one runs nearly 90 minutes — and they could probably benefit from a bit more editing. I found that I didn’t really mind, though. They’re travel shows as much as sports documentaries; with all of the long aerial shots of beautiful landscapes, it’s hard to watch them without wanting to plan a trip to the Scottish countryside or Icelandic coast. It allows plenty of time for reflection, and it’s awfully relaxing.

Besides, isn’t that the best kind of workout – watching other people work out while you relax?

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.

Stream Strongland on Netflix