If you've never visited the Stockholm archipelago, I highly recommend it. In fact, I think it's perhaps the best thing about Stockholm, and one of the most beautiful places in the world in general — if you're into sailing, islands and seas. It's almost too easy to find an island just for yourself for the weekend, and "Allemansrätten", the law that grants people the right to access wilderness, only makes it even more accessible. Going there at the midst of winter or during summer are both very different experiences, but both are very charming.
Same with Helsinki and Turku archipelago. We've been spending the whole Christmas in my parent's cabins near Helsinki in a small island. It was a bit tricky to come here with a small boat due to the ice, but when we got here, we just heated up the sauna and started enjoying a very quiet island life.
I’m from Europe and when I saw the islands on the ferry to Helsinki’s from Stockholm I have to say I was amazed at the beauty so much so I’d love own property there now. Truly astonishing seeing kids on tiny row boats chilling on random rocks in the estuary
Others mentioned not being too close to any houses. The second part is, you are not allowed to damage anything. Leave it as you found it. No trash, no damaging plant life, and so on. Also, exact rules differ from country to country, but generally the Nordics follow "everyman's rights" something like this:
You cannot make a campfire, drive off-road, damage agricultural fields, cut down trees or damage trees (even the already fallen ones), go into pastures with cattle in them, and so on. Rule of thumb, don't bother the landowner, don't damage anything, and don't disrupt any of their income sources, including logging, fishing, agriculture etc. You can camp but if you want a campfire I suggest going to one of the designated camping areas; there's plenty of those too, even completely free log lean-tos and benches around a firepit and even free firewood hauled in, if you go remote enough.
And then there's protected areas, with stricter rules. For example, if a rare bird is known to nest on some specific island, you might not be allowed to go on that island at all.
But yes, if you're smart about it, you can camp almost anywhere.
It's completely legal, yes. As a matter of fact, it's so legal that sometimes you ask yourself why own land there, since technically you can even camp on private land thanks to allemansrätten.
With one caveat: you can't be too close to any houses with your camp. I don't remember how far, but at least they should not be able to see you from their window...
Respect is the actual legal definition.... There is no legal distance and it depends and you need to respect peoples privacy. You can definitely camp where you can be seen, but if you can not be seen you are almost certainly in the clear.
It is a tricky subject because you can do a lot on other peoples land as long as you are respectful. I have no problems with people camping on my land especially when they are walking or cycling while car camping is illegal in most instances.
Mm. I can't find it now. I'm pretty sure it was Stockholm. Had a WW2 Mark 14 out front - one of those terrible American torpedoes. I do specifically mean a and only a torpedo museum (which is not huge, and was on a little island), not the Maritime Museum (which is huge).
The section for Australia seems very broad: "Australia itself dominates the islands around its coastal fringe, which range in size from smaller rocks that are not covered by water at high tide to ..."
While it says the US has 18,617 islands, I struggle to find an official source for that very precise number.
I also see how https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Florida says "The U.S. state of Florida has a total of 4,510 islands that are ten acres or larger", suggesting that ten acres is the minimum sized used for "island" in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Maine says "Maine is home to over 4,600 coastal islands, ranging from large landmasses like Mount Desert Island to small islets and ledges exposed above mean high tide."
It categories things as "Big Islands (greater than 1 km2), Small Islands (less than or equal to 1 km2 and greater than or equal to 0.0036 km2), and Very Small Islands (less than 0.0036 km2)." "There are 21,818 big islands in the database. The remaining 318,868 islands are all less than 1 km2 and are classed as small islands.'
I don't think that quote implies a limit for the definition in any way. It just says that this is the count below a given threshold. It doesn't say anything about that threshold being a standard or anything of that sort.
Part of it is based on population density. It is an island if it has a name and someone living on it. Canada has thousands, hundreds of thousands, of unnamed "islands" with nobody on them. Wherever land is relatively flat, every water body will have a few.
Canada's north is so vast that even unique features remain unnamed, such as the "Island in a Lake on an Island in a Lake on an Island".
The Global Islands database I linked to considers the Delmarva Peninsula ("Lower Delaware") in the US to be an island because of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, so that's not unique to Sweden.
There’s just literally no possible way that Sweden has an order of magnitude more islands than the US or Canada.
Open up Google Earth and scan around northern coastlines of all these countries and you’ll laugh at the premise of this article.
With that said I wouldn’t be surprised if they have the most documented/counted islands. That’s another thing entirely and also sort of interesting I suppose.
It's actually quite an interesting question. The West Coast of the contiguous US has almost no islands, you really start getting "islandy" only in the Puget Sound.
The East Coast has more islands, but then you need to decide how you classify the river deltas. Is a bump in a brackish swamp an island or not?
On the other hand, Sweden has thousands of really small but also well-defined islands. They can be just several square meters in area, but they are well above the water and clearly separated from the main landmass.
California has more named islands than Washington, but they’re not all obvious since there’s quite a few small islands in the San Francisco Bay, Suisun Bay and the Sacramento River Delta. I tried fact checking which of the two had the most total islands between them but couldn’t find a satisfactory answer.
From a practical standpoint, sailing in the Bay Area is dead boring. There's not that much worth visiting. And once you go outside of the Bay, the next interesting stop is Japan. Puget Sound is way better.
It'd be nice to quantify this somehow. I guess one metric would be "navigable rocky islands"?
Yeah I’m talking about more polar “drowned coastlines” which clearly are the place to go hunting for lots of islands. In the US that’s Maine and Alaska especially.
Sweden sure has a lot of islands I’d believe they are #1. It’s the +10x claim that seems suspicious.
It all depends on what you count/map. By some european definition Sweden has 24 islands if you discount all the small ones. We basically have an extreme anount of small ones from the last ice age.
Bit whatever, it’s a great place to sail/visit no matter how you count.
Sweden is the country with most islands in the world, followed by Norway and Finland.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-countries-have-the...