Gulli Gudmundsson has been one of the few riders setting the standard for street shredding in Europe for the past couple of seasons. It's hard to keep up with the Joneses when you ride with the Helgasons, so all you can do is step up your game. That is precisely what Gulli did and now he's sitting on top. Sit down and Ketchup with homie over his real name, Iceland, McDonald's, poo in a cup and much, much more.
You are known as Gulli but that is just a bone you threw us non-Icelanders, it's not your real, full name. So how do you really pronounce your name then? I have been called Gulli since I was a kid but yea, Gulli is way easier than my real name for you non-Icelanders. My real name is Guðlaugur Hólm Guðmundsson. 
Bjork was the most famous export of Iceland but now there is the infamous volcano, whose name no one can pronounce. Do you think that Bjork is pissed about that? Oh, and how do you pronounce the volcano's name? Nah, I don’t think so, Björk is getting a lot of love back in Iceland and all over, she just received the Polar music award in Stockholm so she's stoked. It's always so funny to hear people try talking Icelandic, The name of the volcano is Eyjafjallarjökull. It’s a glacier and Jökull means glacier in English.
Now that McDonald's has pulled out of Iceland, how are you coping with its absence? I’m so depressed, all of Iceland just went to shit. Everybody forgot about all our economic problems and started going insane because of no McDonald’s burgers in their bellies. Just kidding, I don’t care at all. Iceland still has the only Taco Bell in Europe I’m pretty sure, so we should be proud of that, haha. We also have Metro, it's an exact copy of McDonald's, they opened up right after McDonald's left.
What is it like to ride in Iceland, do you have hills and parks or are street rails and urban jibs the only possibilities? It's different! The resorts are not that good but the mountains are, so it's really fun to ride there when the snow is good! One mountain, which is my local, Hlíðarfjall, has some rails and small kickers sometimes, it's getting better and better every year. Iceland has lots of good mountains but only a few resorts! In the town I grew up in, Akureyri, a lot of kids are riding the streets. Back in the day me, Eiki, Halldór and some friends built two street rails and now the new generation of kids have made two more. It's fun to see the kids progress and follow in our footsteps.
Do you have penguins in your backyard?
Yea sometimes, especially in January.
You broke your back last season pretty early on, how did you do that and how is it recovering? Yea, I broke my back mid-February. I had just arrived in Austria and was going to start filming powder after 2 months of rail riding. The first day we decided to do a small pillow run, I went for it and right after landing I smashed into a big rock with my ass so the impact came straight up the spine. It was the first day, first try, first pow shot of the season, sucked so bad, hehe. But I’m all good now, was in Hintertux the other day and now I’m skating everyday till the next trip comes.
Peep his full part from last year's Bataleon Remix Project:
It was not that different from Factor really, just some different people of course, but Eiki and Halldór were also in the crew so I worked a lot with them as always. I was able to do what I wanted so I’m stoked! I’m happy about my part, I started the winter trying everything I had to get a good video part, filmed for about two months and got full part. After every winter I feel like I can do better but that’s how it supposed to be, it's what gets you amped for next winter!
You grew up riding in Iceland with the Helgasons, for a while there was not such a huge market for snowboarding in Iceland and therefore not many Icelandic pros. Do you think that you guys changed that? Will it be easier for Icelandic riders to break through now? Snowboarding has been in Iceland for a while now, when we were kids there were some guys who rode pretty well, they also organized a big contest every year in Akureyri, they deserve props for that for sure. At that time me, the Helgasons and our friends were evolving into a filming crew. We did 5 films, 3 of them had premieres in theaters and were available on DVD (the first one on VHS). We also made one skate film. Everything was done by us and our very good friend Geiri, now my team manager at Atikin! A lot of Icelandic kids were stoked on those movies and started riding after seeing them. After the last movie we moved on to bigger and better things, and all the kids back in Iceland kept on getting better and better. Snowboarding still isn't really on the map in Iceland, When Halldór won the gold medal at the X-Games it barely made the news. Icelanders are way too busy caring about football and handball. I would say snowboarding and skateboarding are growing in Iceland, but not that fast. There are sick skaters and snowboarders, just no feedback from the mainstream. This year two kids from Akureyri went to Malung, the same snowboarding school in Sweden that we went to, so I hope they are going to step it up! I think we made it easier for the kids in Iceland for sure, the mountains are more open to them and they really see possibility of making a career out of snowboarding.
Now is your chance to tell us a funny story involving you and the Helgasons, spill the beans man!
Hehe, one time while we were filming one of our old videos we stayed at a youth hostel in Reykjavík. We did a lot of Jackass-type shenanigans back then and filmed it for the movies. So one evening we decided to take a shit in a cup and put it in the ceiling, it was one of those suspended ceilings where you can lift the panel and there are wires and stuff like that in there. I think we left the day after we put the cup in there, but we came back the year after and checked the ceiling. The cup o' shit was gone, so either somebody had a fun day at work or some kids had a funny night at the hostel.
You are also a good skater, what gives you the most satisfaction, skate or snow? Would you rather be a pro skater or snowboarder if given the choice? I’m not sure what gives me more satisfaction, they're kind of even. I wish I could do both for ever! I have to say I would rather be a pro skateboarder, because of the weather and you only need skate shoes and your deck.
Peep the skills on a deck:
Interview by Tom Kingsnorth