Look, Norwegian ducks, I'm trying not to be judgy, but as a general rule, if a lake is totally frozen over, it's not the most ideal place for you to be. Maybe the duck in this unfortunate tale was merely an explorer, like the hikers who shot that really cool video of walking on clear ice. Unfortunately for our feathered friend, however, his ice-walking experience was not nearly as pleasant: Somewhere along his lake trek, he not only fell through a crack in the ice, but got stuck headfirst, prompting a man to jump into a frozen lake to save the drowning duck.
The bearded hero is Lars Jørun Langøien, a Norwegian ice bather. Yes, that is a thing that I just googled to spare you the trouble. People actually swim in icy water for fun, so many of them do this, in fact, that there is an actual International Ice Swimming Association. So good old Lars was prepping for a rather bone-chilling morning anyway, and had already donned his swim gear (wet suit? nahhhh) when he spotted the duck go under. And in true Norwegian ice bather fashion, he jumped right in and not only saved the duck, but then gave it mouth-to-beak resuscitation. Mouth-to-beak resuscitation, you guys.
As for how they got all the photographic evidence of this harrowing rescue, I'm going to assume he was about to have an ice bathers modeling shoot before it happened (most likely for an Ice Bathers Calendar that we can expect in 2015), and all of these shenanigans happened right when the lens was getting ready to capture Mister October. Literally none of this is probably true, but a girl can dream. In any case, this looks like a duck and human friendship that will stand the test of time (and pretty much any temperature nature can throw at them):
Images: BlazePress, Damnaw/Twitter
