Green Hour

Experience snowboarding under the majestic Northern Lights! Monster Energy is proud to announce the worldwide premiere of the visually stunning “Green Hour” video, which explores snowboarding in Norway’s backcountry amid the spectacular Northern Lights aerial phenomenon. 

The high-definition edit features professional snowboarders Ståle Sandbech, Torgeir Bergrem, and Rene Rinnekangas on an epic journey to visually capture snowboarding like it’s never been documented before.

“We had this vision or this idea to go up to the Arctic Circle and capture probably some of the most magical things on this planet, The Northern Lights… and snowboard underneath it,” said Monster Energy’s Sandbech about the project.

Also known as aurora borealis, the Northern Lights cover the entire sky in brilliant lights that take the form of rays, curtains, and dynamic flickers. Explaining the challenges behind capturing the phenomenon, Sandbech said: “To go chase the Northern Lights, you have to go to remote places. Deep into the mountains and wait patiently in the dark.”

Directed and edited by professional snowboard cinematographer Marcus Skin, “Green Hour” is the result of a four-year journey that started before the pandemic. The film first set course for the Northern Lights in 2020 when a crew of snowboarders and filmers began capturing snowboard footage in Tromsø, part of Norway’s Arctic Circle. But then the world shut down and battling through Covid restrictions and Olympic contest seasons, the team now finally achieved their dream of snowboarding under the insane Northern Lights.

“Green Hour” was captured on video by pro snowboard filmers Marcus Skin, Nikolai Schirmer, Christian Bjønness, Spencer Whiting (aka Gimbal God), and Rasmus Bjerkan with supporting still photography by Frode Sandbech.

The ambitious project, spearheaded by Ståle Sandbech and his brother Frode, began in early 2020 with a plan to film a unique snowboard video under the Northern Lights. The original crew consisted of the Sandbechs alongside Rinnekangas and filmers Schirmer and Whiting. Schirmer acted as a local guide on excursions that came close to catching the Northern Lights but yielded no results. Once international travel bans and border closings took hold in March 2020 with the COVID lockdown, the plan was suspended, but the spark and drive to complete the project remained.

“After being shut down by Covid, we decided to go back a few years later,” said Monster Energy’s Sandbech. “We teamed up with Torgeir [Bergrem] hoping to find what we were looking for.” In late 2023, the crew made a final push and found the Northern Lights in the Arctic skies.