There’s a Country Where You Can Camp in Someone’s Garden
By law.
A few years ago, armed with nothing but European naivety and the desire to do something nice for my brother, I found myself in Joshua Tree, California, walking toward a recording studio owned by a musician he’s obsessed with.
My plan—if you can call it that—was simple. I’d get close. Have a look around. Maybe knock.
In Europe, this is how things go. The worst that happens is someone asks you to leave. Maybe you exchange a few polite words. Maybe, if you’re lucky, they let you have a peek. I once tracked Roger Federer to a hotel in Rome and came away with a photo and an autograph—but that’s a story for another time.
In California, I stopped at the no-trespassing sign.
Not because I’m particularly law-abiding, but because something in the air reminded me: this is a country where people own guns. And mean it. Private property here is not a suggestion. It’s a philosophical position, possibly a loaded one.
I picked up a small stone from the ground and left. That was my souvenir.
My brother wasn’t impressed, but he appreciated the gesture.
Back in Europe, I wouldn’t have felt that flicker of fear. And the reason has a name that sounds like a spell from a Viking musical.
Allemannsretten. Everyman’s right.
It’s a Norwegian concept so old nobody quite knows when it started—only that by the time someone thought to write it down, in 1957, it had already been the natural order of things for centuries. Before roads, before cars, before Google Maps, Norwegians crossed each other’s land because that was simply how you got anywhere. The idea that someone might own a forest in a way that excluded other people from it would have seemed not just unusual, but faintly unhinged.
What it means in practice is this: you can walk, cycle, ski, camp, swim, or pick berries on any uncultivated land in Norway—forests, mountains, coastline—regardless of who owns it. You can pitch a tent on private land for the night, as long as you stay away from any buildings and leave no trace. You are allowed to exist in nature without asking anyone’s permission.
The rule isn’t “stay out.”
It’s “just don’t be a d*ick.”
Norway isn’t alone in this. Scotland has its own version. So do Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic—variations on the same idea: that nature is not a commodity. That a forest doesn’t fully belong to whoever bought it. That you are allowed to move through the world without paying someone for the privilege of being in it.
It’s the same thread I pulled on in the botellón piece—the Spanish street party that’s technically illegal but universally tolerated, the Barcelona superblocks that handed the streets back to people. Europe keeps returning to the same question: who does this space belong to?
And keeps arriving at the same answer.
Last autumn, a dear friend and I drove deep into the Swedish countryside to go mushroom picking. Her boss, an avid mushroom hunter with strong opinions, had shared a location he considered foolproof. The pin sat squarely in the middle of nowhere, which in Sweden is saying something. We parked, we wandered, we filled our basket. On the way back, we discovered our car was technically locked in—because, yes, some of the land was private.
This was resolved by knocking on a door and having a perfectly pleasant conversation with the people who lived there.
The worst that happened was… a chat.
Those mushrooms, by the way, were the best I’ve ever tasted. I don’t know if that’s because Swedish forests produce extraordinary chanterelles, or because there’s something about walking freely—without anxiety, without the low hum of am I allowed to be here?—that makes everything taste better.
Probably both.
Any similar experiences? I’m curious. Tell me in the comments.