I believe Norway has more.
Well shit, according to this it does: https://www.worlddata.info/islands-by-country.php
Canada a distant third
Canada was my guess for 1st. I wonder how good of a count they have given the ice.
I would’ve guessed like Vietnam, they have a shit ton of islands with people that spend their whole lives living at sea.
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.
This sounds like an amazing law. In America, property owners need to keep people off their land, since any injury that happens is the land owner’s liability. If someone trespasses, falls into your pool and drowns, you’re fucked!
That liability thing is so silly
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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”.
England has similar Right of Passage laws. They even have a holiday for it where people walk the land to keep the law upheld. Pretty cool, and extremely different from us Americans haha.
They get your money and you get to sponsor an island?
I follow a cool Instagram called cheap Nordic houses that’s super cheap real estate in those countries. They’re all pretty houses in the middle of nowhere or small towns. And iirc you gotta live in the house full time for X amount of years to get residency and apply for a blue card.
I’d have guessed Indonesia had the most islands. This was quite surprising.
I was thinking Philippines
Not the most islands, but definitely the most people on islands, by a very very huge margin. Java has some absolutely insane stats. Java has more people than all of Russia, but is 133 times smaller.
Also largest Muslim population of any country. Pretty interesting as it’s nowhere near the middle east and sw Asia.
Holy shit, I just looked up the numbers and that has blown my mind.
Indonesia has “only” about 12,000 which is a lot but nothing in comparison to the number in the post.
how small does something get before it’s not technically an island?
According to John Donne, at least the size of ‘no man’
When it isn’t always fully above the tide.
probably will have fewer islands as the water rises
I kept looking in the image for the joke about 1000 island dressing and couldn’t find anything. I might be slightly disappointed.
Well I mean you can’t expect islands, inhabited or not, to put on pants every day.
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.
Fuck yea, how much to inhabit one of those bastards?
How much is a boat?
Well since we’re dreaming: how about I buy and island and my friend buys an island and we build trebuchets and go to war with each other.
How is the climate? Like flooding and such.
Sweden is the Goat-land
