Most of us long for spring to settle in—to stop its flirtation and thaw the ground, green the trees, and lengthen the days. This is not the case for eight-year-old Lily Sølvig Wedel Krambeck, a member of Amager Strand Sejlinstitution’s Polar Bear Ice Swimmer Club in Copenhagen, Denmark. “I don’t look forward to spring because then the ice swimmer season is over,” she says.

When photographer Daniel Hjorth, a student at the Danish School of Journalism and an intern at Danish newspaper Politiken, was assigned the task of illustrating a particularly cold and clingy winter, he came across a team of thick-skinned youth who were not only surviving the frigid season but immersing themselves in its most intense manifestation.

“Ice swimming is