Some of the funding has been

Ross Edgley, 39, from Alderley Edge in Cheshire, joked the three-month challenge will be "the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard" - the home of Thor.He said he was introduced to Australian Hemsworth during the production of Thor: Love And Thunder (2022), describing the Hollywood star "just full of questions" and an "encyclopaedia" of Nordic folklore.

Mr Edgley will embark on his journey, deemed the Great Icelandic Swim, on Friday, and expects to face choppy waters, killer whales and temperatures as low as 3C.The swimmer's intended routine will see him swim for six hours and rest for six hours, a pattern which will be repeated every day for about three months.Mr Edgley is no stranger to difficult challenges, having previously swum more than 1,791 miles (2882km) in 157 days around the coast of Great Britain, as well as earning a Guinness World Record for the longest-distance assisted adventure swim, covering 317 miles (510km) along the Yukon River in Canada.

But he said the Iceland challenge is likely to be "twice as hard" because of the colder temperatures."Usually in England, when you get out of a frozen lake, you're running somewhere where there's a hot chocolate and you can get around the fire - but out there it's just Viking country," he said.

The ultra-swim is also being completed in the name of science, with Mr Edgley planning to take daily water samples, working in collaboration with the University of Iceland and the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland.

The samples are designed to help build a picture about the biodiversity around Iceland's coast, researching the environmental DNA (eDNA) in the water.There, people can get advice on "literally anything", Ms Newman said, such as writing a CV or filling out forms, or make suggestions on "what they feel they're missing at the moment".

She said the aim was to involve hard-to-reach families in Welland, which is one of the most deprived areas of the city."We've got some work to do in winning over people's trust," she said.

"It does feel as though people are a little bit insular, a lot of people felt like it's difficult to connect with people."If we just get a few people to start with, then they can see how friendly we all are, and how much we want to help."