Kelsey Henson is a Canadian fitness model and Instagram star who is married to Hafthor Bjornsson, better known as Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane from HBO‘s Game of Thrones. The couple, who owns a gym together, is well-known for their enormous height disparity. Kelsey worked in construction and as a waitress in Canada before moving to Iceland to meet Hafthor Bjornsson. She’s currently building a career as a fitness model and has a significant Instagram following.
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Table of Contents
Early Life
Kelsey Morgan Henson was born in Alberta, Canada, on March 5, 1990. Kathleen, a sibling she grew up with, went on to become a professional photographer. She attended the University of Alberta from 2012 to 2014 to acquire a certificate in Occupational Health and Safety after graduating from high school. From 2016-to 2017, she completed a course at Alberta Construction Safety Association and acquired the designations of National Construction Safety Officer (NCSO) and Health & Safety Administrator (HSA). She worked as a waitress at Earls Kitchen + Bar in Fort McMurray, Alberta from 2012 to 2017 while pursuing her further education.
Career
Kelsey started working as a financial services representative at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Lac La Biche, Alberta, in April 2010, just a few months after turning 20. She left the job in late 2012 to pursue her studies at the university level. She started working for Voice Construction OPCO ULC in May 2014 as a Project Administrator and Junior Safety Advisor after graduating. She worked as a Building Operator for Guthrie Mechanical Services Ltd. for six months starting in April of the following year. She began working as a Field Services Administrator for Tervita Corporation in Fort McMurray, Alberta in October 2015.
Hafthor inspired Kelsey Henson to work on her fitness and she began training with him at his gym, Thor’s Power Gym, which the pair also owns. Her Instagram account, which has over 458k followers, is known for uploading photographs from her training routine. She is also a professional athlete who has attracted support from a number of well-known companies. In March 2020, she announced a one-year partnership with Transparent Labs, a nutrition supplement company. She also used her posts to advertise Reign Body Fuel energy drinks. Kelsey’s husband shared a video on his YouTube channel in August 2019 showing her pulling a Dodge Ram pickup truck on leg day.
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Personal Life
Hafthor Bjornsson, who was in Alberta, Canada for a strongman competition, paid Kelsey Henson a visit while she was working as a waitress at Earls Kitchen + Bar in Fort McMurray in early September 2017. She immediately identified him as Game of Thrones ‘The Mountain,’ and requested him to pose for a photo with her, which she posted on Instagram on September 9 with the caption “Met Hafór, AKA The Mountain, from Game of Thrones” Soon after, they began dating, and in November, she joined him on a trip to Europe, seeing Spain, Cyprus, and Iceland, his homeland.
They maintained a long-distance relationship for a while, but in December 2017, she quit both her positions at Tervita and Earls and went to Iceland with her lover. With an Instagram post with Bjornsson on January 2, 2018, she wished her followers a ‘Happy New Year’ from Iceland.
Pictures of Kelsey Henson and Bjornsson together went viral on the internet shortly after their affair was made public, perplexing fans owing to their vast height disparity. Bjornsson, who comes from a Viking family of big people, was 6 feet 9 inches tall and weighed 395 pounds at the time, whereas Kelsey was only 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 105 pounds. “How do you kiss?” an admirer questioned her in one of the couple’s photos. Do you always run into his arms and wrap your legs around his waist? Please take a photo of this amazing feat.” “He bends, I tiptoe,” she said, amusing the fan. Or simply say, “Screw it, pick me up!”
Kelsey announced her marriage to Bjornsson on Instagram on October 21, 2018, by posting images from their wedding, including one with the comment “Looking forward to pulling this big guy about for the rest of my life.” “It is with great pleasure that I now get to name Kelsey Morgan Henson my wife!” Bjornsson said besides a black-and-white photo from their wedding day. While they did not specify the date of their wedding at the time, they married on August 24, 2018, in Iceland, according to their anniversary wishes for the following year. Bjornsson dated Thelma Björk Steinmann and Andrea Sif Jónsdóttir in the past, both of whom accused him of domestic violence, which he denied.
In April 2020, Kelsey Henson and Hafthor Bjornsson revealed they were expecting their first child together. They used his Instagram account to reveal the gender of their unborn kid in a series of images. They were photographed bursting a black balloon with blue confetti coming out of it to reveal that the couple was expecting a boy in the images. “Our lovely baby boy made his big debut into the world at 11:19 AM on September 26th, 2020 after a brief and intense six hours,” Kelsey captioned photos of her newborn son on September 26, 2020.
“After an extremely hard 2 hours and 19 minutes of pushing our healthy, strong, beautiful boy arrived,” her husband said of the morning. While this is Kelsey’s first kid, her husband Bjornsson already has a daughter, Theresa Lif, from a previous relationship with Steinmann.
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Kelsey Henson’s Husband: Who is Hafthor Bjornsson?
Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, popularly known in English as Hafthor, is an Icelandic professional strongman who was born on November 26, 1988. He holds numerous championship titles from multiple strength federations, including many world records, and is the first and only person to win the Arnold Strongman Classic, Europe’s Strongest Man, and the World’s Strongest Man in the same calendar year.
He is the third most decorated strongman in history, behind Lithuania’s Zydrunas Savickas and Poland’s Mariusz Pudzianowski, with 30 international tournament wins. Hafthor is also an actor, having starred in five seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones as Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane.
His Early Life
Hafthor was born in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik. He grew up working on his family’s farm and lifting natural stones, so he was always huge and muscular. His imposing height of 205 cm (6 ft 9 in) can be attributed to his 203 cm (6 ft 8 in) father Björn Reynisson and his tall mother Ragnhethur Juliusdottir.
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Career
Basketball Career
Hafthor began his sports career as a center for the basketball team. In 2004, he made his senior squad debut for Icelandic 1. deild karla club Breiablik. He transferred to FSu Selfoss the next season, but after roughly 10 games, it was discovered that he had been playing with a broken bone in his ankle, necessitating surgery. After recovering, He joined KR in Iceland’s top-tier rvalsdeild in 2006. He had to have a second operation in November after a screw in his ankle cracked, forcing him to miss the rest of the season.
To begin the 2007–2008 season, he returned to FSu Selfoss, where he averaged 6.7 points per game and helped the team earn promotion to the rvalsdeild. Unfortunately, the issue with his ankle persisted, forcing him to quit basketball at the age of 20.
Hafthor played 32 games for Iceland’s junior national basketball teams between 2004 and 2006, as well as 8 games for Iceland’s U-18 national team in Division A of the U18 European Championship. With the U-16 squad, he won the Nordic title in May 2004. He aided Iceland’s progress to Division A during the 2004 FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship Division B. He won the Nordic title once more in 2006, this time with the U-18 team.
StrongMan Career
When Magnus Ver Magnusson, four-time World’s Strongest Man champion, discovered Hafthor at his gym “Jakaból” in 2008, he immediately recognized his potential as a strongman prospect, paving the path for Hafthor to train with Stefán Sölvi Pétursson and Benedikt Magnusson.
Acting Career
In August 2013, Hafthor was cast as Ser Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane in the fourth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones. This was his first major acting job, and he is the third person to play Clegane, following Conan Stevens in season 1 and Ian Whyte in season 2, but he is the first actor to play him in more than one season, with appearances in seasons four through eight. During the inaugural season of the Philadelphia Renaissance Faire in 2015, he was also cast in the starring role. He made an appearance as ‘King Thor,’ the leader of a Viking raiding party intent on taking Amman.
In 2018, Hafthor starred alongside Alain Moussi and Jean-Claude Van Damme in Kickboxer: Retaliation as Mongkut, the primary villain in a film about a kickboxer (Moussi) who is sedated and transported to a Bangkok prison where he is forced to battle a giant for freedom and a great sum of money. In the same year, he starred as Big John in Operation Ragnarok, a film about a village in southern Sweden that has been isolated due to a viral outbreak, with captive Swedes and immigrants banding together to resist an invasion.
The next year, he co-starred in Pharaoh’s War with Mike Tyson, a film about an ex-military man (Tyson) who leads a group of Egyptian refugees through the desert to protect them from a group of nasty mercenaries.
Hafthor appeared in the historical epic fantasy The Northman, starring Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, and Ethan Hawke, in a minor part as Thorfinnr the Tooth-Gnasher in 2022. Willem Dafoe and Anya Taylor-Joy.
Boxing Career
Hafthor challenged previous record holder Eddie Hall to a boxing match on May 2, 2020, after breaking the Deadlift World Record. Hafór totally altered himself to suit the new sport with a training schedule under his coach Billy Nelson and a tighter diet that differed from his strongman days, shedding 60 kg (132 lb) in the process.
In January 2021, Haftorr fought ex-WBO European light-heavyweight champion, Steven Ward, in his first exhibition fight. In May 2021, he faced 2010 Commonwealth Games Heavyweight Gold Medalist Simon Vallily in his second exhibition battle. In his first non-exhibition boxing battle, Hafthor met Canadian Professional Arm-wrestler Devon Larratt on September 18, 2021. When Eddie Hall withdrew from the fight due to a Bicep rupture sustained during preparation, Larratt stepped in to fill the void.
The referee was forced to stop the bout in the first round, granting Hafthor the victory via TKO. After nearly two years of anticipation, Hafthor and Eddie eventually met in Dubai on March 19, 2022, in what was dubbed “The Heaviest Boxing Match in History.” He knocked Eddie down twice to win the fight by unanimous decision, with all three judges scoring it 57–54 in his favor.
Personal Life
Hafthor had tumultuous relationships with prior women who accused him of domestic abuse, including his daughter’s mother, Thelma Björk Steinmann, who once feared for her life while on vacation. She filed charges, but the matter was dropped, and Hafthor subsequently charged her with slander. However, things got to the point that he couldn’t see his daughter for three years. The issue calmed over the years and he frequently visits his daughter, Theresa Líf, who lives in Denmark with her mother.
Since late 2017, Hafthor has been dating Kelsey Henson, a Canadian fitness model whom he met in Alberta while on tour for a strongman tournament. Because of their height disparity, the couple drew a lot of attention. Stormur Magni Hafórsson, their son, was born on September 26, 2020, after they married in August 2018.
