I wonder how much it costs to buy an island in Sweden. Would be super chill to have your own island. Getting electricity, internet and plumbing might be difficult, and good luck if you have an emergency; but would be cool.
Edit: apparently you don’t need to be a citizen of Sweden to buy land there. If you own land in Sweden, do you get an automatic visa allowing for permanent residency? If not, what’s the point of allowing anyone to buy land if they don’t automatically get a pass to live on that land?
you also can’t really keep people off your land? my understanding just comes from a tick tock video made by a guy who lives in his van over there, if the person isn’t being a nuisance, they’re allowed to stay for something like 24 to 48 hours
“Allemansrätten” is the law you want to look up.
It’s not that you can’t keep people off your land if you really set out to accomplish that, rather, if you own a portion of uncultivated wilderness or forest, people can pass through, set up camp for a bit, harvest some wild plants they might find, etc.
If you don’t set up a farm, a home, or start developing the land in some way that isn’t just letting a forest grow to sell for lumber someday, then yeah, people get to be on your land. And if you own a giant piece of land, people only have to stay away from buildings and such. If most of it is just wilderness, those parts are fair game.
And there are some strict rules for what is and isn’t allowed. Like you said, being a nuisance is not ok, and one of the biggest deals is that you can’t damage trees. Trees are lumber, they are literally money growing on trees, so killing or damaging young trees can lead to extremely serious criminal charges.
You can use wood you find to set up a campfire, but you absolutely cannot hack parts off any living trees to do so. Dead branches that’ve fallen to the forest floor, only.
What this law means, is that anyone can just go outside the cities and other developed areas of the country, and go hiking out in nature. Or boating out in the archipelagos. You’re allowed to explore and adventure, without having to dodge invisible lines on the ground defined by property rights. Instead, you only have to follow some basic common-sense rules, such as staying away from private buildings, not polluting or making noise, etc.
For those looking for a translation, the law literally translates to “the right of every man”, but is more commonly translated to “right of public access”/“freedom to roam”.
I’d have guessed Indonesia had the most islands. This was quite surprising.
I was thinking Philippines
I kept looking in the image for the joke about 1000 island dressing and couldn’t find anything. I might be slightly disappointed.
Wondering if you’re even allowed to purchase any of them or if they’re just considered public land. Although IIRC Sweden has laws that allow fair use of lands for camping and stuff for short periods of time as long as your not near someone’s house or farm.
A friend of mine and her husband own an island in Sweden. They hold retreats there and also rent it out as an Airbnb.
Airbnb
You heard this and didn’t immediately request for them to step up to the guillotine? Are you even a Lemmy user?
Oh shit, you’re right. Why do I even still consider her a friend? I need to cut her out of my life.
Actually, I haven’t talked to her in a few years. We went to high school together ('89-'93) and just reconnect every so often.
Also I just looked it up and I was mistaken about the retreats. They actually let people stay for free at the island for a week. They call it “Ideas Island” and let creative people stay there to help them get the creative juices flowing. I read a quote from her husband that went something like: “Your book could change someone’s life. If there’s a book in you, write it.”
But yes, they do also rent it out as an Airbnb.
i’m sure a lot of the islands are part of nature reserves, but also a lot of them are already privately owned with a house or dozen on them, especially around stockholm/gothenburg.
You can totally find some island somewhere to purchase and live on, it’s just tedious and the island will probably be located in bumfuck nowhere and now you suddenly need both a boat and a car to get anywhere, and it takes 2 hours to get to the closest grocery store…
as for allemansrätten, if you have a tiny island with a house on it that is honestly about the only way to nullify the right to roam, since you’re not allowed to go near houses.
How is the climate? Like flooding and such.
Sweden is the Goat-land
how small does something get before it’s not technically an island?