Kullamannen by UTMB®

Late October. It’s been dark for a while when the church doors in Höganäs swing open to a crowd of tense runners, headlights on 🔦, breath steaming in the chilly air of the Scania. And there, out of nowhere, a masked knight on his steed bursts forth to guide runners out of the town before disappearing into the night 🐴. We’re in the Kullamannen by UTMB

A little different, yes. Because this race, founded in 2014 on the southern coast of Sweden, has a personality that few events in the world can claim. It leans into something ancient, hard to capture in a spec sheet: an atmosphere. The vibe of a Baltic peninsula whipped by autumn storms, haunted by a legend of an immortal knight, and lined with coastal trails that overlook the sea in the darkness 🌚

The legend of Kullamannen tells of a knight with a broken heart who sought refuge at the peninsula’s end to build a castle surrounded by swords, so as never to forget the one he loved 💔. No one really knows who he was, but in every version of the story, he is the immortal who always sides with the weak against their oppressors ⚔️. Just and ruthless at once. "Rough but fair" as the Swedes say 🇸🇪. That’s roughly the perfect definition of this race. And if you want one of the possible origins of all this: a tale dating back to the Battle of Svolder in the year 999, when the Norwegian king Olav Tryggvason, surrounded by a fleet far larger than his own, chose to cast himself into the sea rather than surrender. Ultra-efforts refusing to give up on these shores were already organized long before the invention of the bib 🛡️;

The Kullaberg peninsula, the race’s central playground, isn’t an ordinary backdrop ⚓️. Inhabited since the Stone Age, it preserves stone circles, ancient burial mounds and remains of old villages 🏘️. Under your trail shoes, millennia of history compressed into limestone. And at the tip of the peninsula, the Kullen lighthouse, the strongest in all of Scandinavia, watches over the Öresund, one of the world’s busiest maritime routes 🚢. At some point along the course you’ll run with hundreds of ships passing between the Sweden and Denmark, in the dark, as a northerly wind tries politely but firmly to change your mind about being there 🌬️.

The numbers for the "100 Miles" deserve to be laid out plainly: 173 km, 2 300 m of positive elevation, crossing 15 nature reserves and two summits, starting from Höganäs, finishing in Båstad. The elevation gain may seem modest, and that’s exactly the trap that all those coming from alpine races fall into in the first year 🙃. The abandonment rate hovers between 40 and 60%. For comparison, UTMB sits around 30%. The reason boils down to two words: "autumn" and "Sweden" bringing coastal storms from the southwest, violent winds and more night than day 🌝. The section everyone talks about is Dödens Zon, the Death Zone, no metaphor ☠️. Technical single tracks at the top of the cliffs of Kullaberg, at night, with winds from the Kattegat. The Kullamannen is nicknamed "Paradise, Sea and Hell," and it’s not just a figure of speech. It’s also a weather report 😜. Outside the 100 Miles, the "Sprint Ultra 100K" (108 km, 749 mD+, 3 Running Stones) is the version for those who prefer a bit less nocturnal philosophy, the "Seventh Seal" of 53 km takes its name from the Bergman film (the Swedish filmmaker who filmed a knight playing chess with Death on a beach) which, indeed, perfectly fits the event’s overall vibe 🎬. Finally, the "North Shore" at 22 km runs along the coastline of Kullaberg for those who want the scenery without getting the weather in the face 😬.

What truly sets the Kullamannen apart in the UTMB calendar is that it fully embraces what it is: an obscure race, literally and figuratively, rooted in a Nordic folklore

The masked knight will be there. The storm maybe not, if you’re lucky. Now it’s up to you! 🫵