The Mountain From 'Game Of Thrones' Is Reading Your Love Poems For Valentine's Day

I will admit that the ongoing partnership between actor and weightlifting champion Thor Björnsson — aka Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane on Game of Thrones — and at-home carbonated drink marvel SodaStream has always surprised me somewhat. Then again, though, I think that’s also why it works. And, uh, folks? They’ve just put out a Valentine’s Day video featuring the Mountain reading love poems. I had no idea how much I wanted something like this in my life, but now that I have it, I am never letting it go. And neither should you.

Björnsson, who is quite literally the World’s Strongest Man (he won the title in May of 2018), first teamed up with SodaStream in 2016 on what turned out to be part April Fool’s Day joke, part advertisement, and part environmental conservation plea. Initially masquerading as an ad for a fictional brand of bottled sparkling water called HeavyBubbles, the video morphs at about the halfway point into an ad for its actual focus — SodaStream — bearing with it a message about minimizing our use of plastic bottles for the good of the planet. The whole thing is a delight, and I highly recommend you watch it at your earliest convenience.

That video ended up being, as they say, the beginning of a beautiful friendship (and probably a lucrative one, too); other collaborations between the actor/weightlifter and SodaStream soon followed, including a November 2016 video that roped in Björnsson’s fellow Game of Thrones cast member Hannah Waddingham, aka Septa Unella, a 2018 talent recruitment campaign, and a video announcing PepsiCo’s acquisition of SodaStream late last year. (The PepsiCo video is worth watching, too, by the way; if you’ve ever wanted to see the Mountain bellow, “IT’S TIME TO SPARKLE,” now’s your chance.)

And now, we have a very special video brought to us by this unlikely yet magnificent pairing in honor of Valentine’s Day. It’s called — what else? — “Mountain of Love.”

On Feb. 6, SodaStream challenged its Facebook followers to “write the bubbliest love poem” they could think of, dedicate it to the person they love most in the world, and leave it as a comment on the post. A few lucky folks might then get the chance to hear their poem read aloud by Björnsson in a “special Valentine’s video” designed to “tear your heart apart.” (“With love,” of course.)

And, draped across a chaise lounge in front of a roaring fire in a cabin that would make Ron Swanson proud, Björnsson does just that in a brand new video: Out of the nearly 300 comments on the original Facebook post, four poems were selected, which the Mountain reads aloud as only the strongest man in the world can.

Also, smooth jazz is playing in the background. It’s perfect.

I’ll admit that I don’t really understand what any of this has to do with sparkling water. But you know what? That’s fine. It is amazing, and that is really all that matters.

Also, I will never, ever get over the fact that an impossibly strong weightlifting champion from Iceland is actually named Thor. Well, I mean, Hafthór, if we’re being thorough, but still. Everything about that is amazing. Just sayin’.

You can watch more of Björnsson’s SodaStream videos at the SodaStream Facebook page. Go ahead. You know you want to. It’s fine. Everything is fine. Happy Valentine’s Day.