FAQ

What is Elska Magazine?

Elska is a bi-monthly photography and storytelling publication dedicated to sharing the bodies and voices of men from LGBTQ communities all over the world. Each issue is made in a different city where readers get to know to a cross-section of everyday local guys through honest photography and personal stories. One article described Elska as "part intellectual queer pin-up mag and part sexy anthropology journal," and another as "probably the nicest, most sincere magazine ever." We quite like that!

The issue I want says ‘sold out’. Will you be reprinting more?

In the early days, we used to print Elska in rather small quantities and reprint a particular issue if it sold especially well. However, due our increase in quality since 2019 (using offset printing method) we now have significantly larger minimum print runs. Now, once an issue sells out, it's probably* gone for good. However you may try contacting one of our stockists in case they still have a copy.

As always, you can download e-versions of all our issues, but if print's what you're after, grab them while you can!

*We typically do one reissue of a past sold-out issue once per year, and the choice of which issue is down to our most loyal readers. To have your say, join our Editors Circle.

Who writes the stories?

The bulk of the texts you read in Elska are written by the men we photographed themselves. Each subject is instructed to write about any topic whatsoever as long as it's true, meaning the range of topics and styles stays varied.

The aim of having these subjects write their own stories despite not being professional writers any more than they are professional models is to invite you readers get to know them intimately, as if you met them in real life. In keeping with our goal to keep their voices authentic, we have a very light editing touch, mainly just fixing spelling errors and structural problems. You can read this if you'd like more details about Elska's editing style.

We tell our participants to write in whatever language they feel most comfortable in, be it English, French, Icelandic, Ukrainian, Thai, whatever! We always follow any non-English texts with an English translation. So if you see something you can't read, turn the page and you'll find the English version.

The number one factor behind our choice of destination is that we include a diversity of geography in our roster. Beyond that, decisions can be made for various specific reasons, such as requests from locals to feature their town, finding of an especially cheap flight, or via our annual Editors Circle poll to nominate and select a future city.

Elska is sold in dozens of cities around the world. Check the stockists page for the full list. However, it's wise to contact the shop in advance if you're looking for a particular issue as most of the shops order some but not all editions or may be sold out of certain ones.

Elska Ekstra is our companion zine, featuring outtakes, behind the scenes images, extra boys and extra stories from the making of our flagship Elska issues. They can be bought individually or are included as part of any Deluxe Annual Subscription. 

As for the spelling, we spell it with a ‘ks’ in part because we think ‘x' is a weird letter, especially in Icelandic, and because it would be too on the nose to use an ‘x’ since the content of Elska Ekstra is often more xxx than the main Elska mags.

We very much prioritise print media, focusing our efforts on creating a beautiful and collectible print publication. We do however maintain a blog with some bonus content and behind the scenes stories, which is available exclusively on Patreon.

'Elska' is not an acronym. It means 'love' in Icelandic in the verb form, as in 'I love Stockholm' ['Ég elska Stokkhólm']. 

First of all, the word we use for our participants / subjects is ‘elskan’, not ‘model’, which is the Icelandic word for ‘darling'. Typically we find our elskans around a month before arriving in a city after having sent out a call for participants online. Or sometimes we find guys spontaneously when we're in a city, perhaps a friend of one of the other elskans, or maybe some random bloke!

There's no particular type of guy we're looking for, just that they must live in the city we're featuring. Everyone is welcome and our shoot schedule is filled first come, first served. You're welcome too, so please fill out this form to go on our list, and if we come to your city, you'll be the first to know.

Music has always been really important to fueling our creative process. It helps keep up the motivation, elevates the mood, and helps energise. For every Elska city, we create a mixtape which we listen to over and over when commuting between shoots and while editing the images and laying out the publications. As for the choice of music, this is often songs we hear in the city, perhaps at one of the elskan's homes or in cafés or taxis or whatever. And some other songs are just stuff we're into at the moment.

Near the last page of each Elska issue, there is a Spotify QR code so you can listen to the mixtape along with us. You can also find a masterlist here, with links to them all.

The vast majority of men who take part in Elska do so to be part of our project, which is foremost a print publication, but not to be part of some dating or networking scheme. Our general policy is that if an elskan wants to be tagged, we will tag them; but if they don't, we won't. Simples.