Trespassing in Sweden

I spent my last weekend in Sweden camping and hiking on the island of Tjörn on the west coast of Sweden, just north of Gothenburg. When I came to the idyllic sailing village of Skärhamn, I knew this was where I would spend the night. So 300 meters from the Nordic Watercolour Museum, I found an ocean-view spot on a rocky hill just out of view (but clearly within earshot) of several dozen homes in the village. Stand up and the homes and museum were in full view. But my tent was hidden from everything, except the glorious ocean in front of me with sailboats quietly plying the water below. I was trespassing in Sweden.

Or it sure felt like I was. Everythinig in me told me that what I was doing was, well, wrong. The audacity of a camper pitching tent in the middle of a quaint little fishing village. I would never attempt something like this in the United States. But here’s the rub. I was perfectly within my rights in Sweden. I had numerous Swedes offer me detailed rules about camping in Sweden, rules which, to say the least, are very different from my experience. Basically, the Swedish right of public access allows everyone to be in the countryside, be it private or public land, provided you do not destroy or disturb. But there is no law which specifies what the right of public access exactly entails. It seems like they’re not really rules, just guidelines.

The reason I share this with you is because it offers an interesting thought experiment about internalizing norms. I was uncomfortable with the thought of camping in this fashion, and I couldn’t help but try to remain hidden and out of sight from others, even though I was doing nothing wrong. I had internalized the American attitude about trespass. So why did I feel this way? Was it because the American theory of trespass was clearly morally correct, such that my feelings flowed from some universal code? Or had I simply learned one arbitrary rule that was no better than another arbitrary rule? Both rules respected the basic norm that we should not infringe on the peace and enjoyment of others, particularly if it is their property. But the rules defined infringement very differently. I had been taught one way to think about a rule, and I was now confronted with a very different approach. An approach that, as an avid camper and non-landowner, suited my purposes perfectly. Except for the minor problem that I felt like I might be doing something wrong.

If you extrapolate that thought to the larger subject of the behavior of collective groups, one has a similar struggle. A nation has been doing something for decades as a matter of tradition, and suddenly it is confronted with arguments that there is an alternative, perhaps better way. Whale hunting perhaps might not be the better course of action. Citizenship offered to anyone born within your borders might not be the best or only rule. Territorial sovereignty over this line in the water, rather than that one. Serious limitations on speech to protect the election process. Exactly why do we allow the practice of FGM?

How does a nation decide when to reject the tradition it has internalized and follow another course? And at what point does it take that new action out of a sense of obligation rather than simply as an experiment of the new? How does a nation “sense” something anyway? Is it supposed to feel differently, and heartily embrace the new norm? Or is it enough to simply grudgingly accept what it is told by the majority to be the better way? In short, what is opinio juris?

I’m sure that if I stayed in Sweden long enough, I would come to embrace the Swedish norm about trespass and open public access. I rather liked the rule as I experienced it this weekend. But for now, my internal compass told me to experiment with, rather than accept, this strange new norm.