Have Outboard Motor and Frozen Lake, Will Spin on the Ice Carousel

Ice carousels are a thing every winter, so it’s normal to get videos of them on a yearly basis. British tabloid the Daily Mail has a new one, of farmer Nikolai Zlydnev, from Leninsk, Russia, who built himself an ice carousel using handy tools and a small outboard motor. Video is available at the link.

Sure, you’ll say, nothing is off-limits in Russia. This is the true land of all possibilities, where you will see walking Ladas, tigers that jump out of cars stopped at the lights, or bicycles with circular saws for wheels riding on frozen lakes. A spinning carousel of ice would fit right in.

Zlydnev’s story isn’t particularly outstanding if you take it in this context, and neither was the construction particularly complex. He measured a circle on ice and used a saw to cut through it, made another hole in the circular platform for a two-stroke outboard motor, brought a bucket for a seat, and was set for several days of guaranteed fun. He even indulged in a spot of ice fishing.

To anyone not familiar with such low temperatures in the vicinity of large bodies of water, the idea could seem odd. And, of course, very strict conditions have to be met, since it comes with serious risks otherwise. The most obvious one is that the water must be frozen solid and that the layer of ice must be thick, or else you risk ending up underneath it. That aside, you also need the right tools to cut through the ice, and an outboard, which will propel the cut disk into endless, slow rotation.

Ice carousels have been around for a very long time, with the first viral videos on their construction appearing in the early 2010s. Zlydnev’s carousel might be in the headlines today, but he’s not the first (nor the last) or the best ice carousel builder. That honor goes to a group of Finnish designers going by Kuopio Great Balls of Ice, which has been building ice carousels since 2016 and has held several world records so far.

At one point in 2019, you could even speak of an international race for the record of the world’s largest ice carousel – an honor that went to the aforementioned group, then to a group in Minnesota, U.S., then back to Finland, and over to Maine, U.S. The current holder of the title of the world’s largest ice carousel is the group from Maine who, in April 2021, built one measuring 1,234 feet (376 meters) in diameter.

Smaller-scale efforts have also been registered, as creating online content started to take off as a proper "job." We’ve had variations on the record, including the creation of the fastest ice carousel, which was propelled not by a boat’s outboard motor but an ATV. We’ve had some built for fun, like the one built by an Estonian grandfather in 2021, measuring 39 feet (11.8 meters) in diameter just so his grandkids wouldn’t become bored.

The videos at the bottom of the page show the 2021 carousel and the first one to hold the title of the world’s largest, the Kuopio Great Balls of Ice carousel of 2019. For the latter, Janne Kapylehto, Ville Haapasalo, and Ismo Apell worked for days to create the rotating disk, which measured 184 meters (604 feet) in diameter and held a solar-powered sauna in the center. It was a challenging job, but, as the saying goes, someone’s gotta do it.

To conclude, ice carousels might be an oddity, but they’re not going anywhere. As long as you have a large body of water frozen over and an outboard, they’re always a (fun) option.