Discussion: Freedom to roam

Is there any weight behind the relatively strong correlation between orienteering performance in international competitions and the freedom to roam?

Thought came from this article that Evalin shared on Facebook because Swedish 'allemannsrätten' comes up, and I've heard a lot about it (Jedermannsrecht).

Makes it a lot easier to organize events.

Makes it a lot easier to train. One still needs permission to organise events. Perhaps the landlords are more open to the idea of allowing strangers on their property, though.

There's probably a strong correlation between freedom to roam and agriculturally-poor terrain, which may lead to a correlation between freedom to roam and good orienteering terrain, in Europe at least.

I had been led to believe (perhaps erroneously) that permission was required for parking and the assembly area, but not for the forest where the controls are going to go. Even if permission is required, I get the impression that the mindset is different such that permission is more forthcoming, as opposed to in places like the USA where the attitude is either that you have to pay high fees (for "public" land) or that it's out of the question for private land because of the chance that someone will injure himself and sue.

The place in the USA where I've seen the strongest notion of "keep off my private property" was in agriculturally hopeless areas of West Virginia.

I noted that the information for this weekend's British Long Championships at Balmoral acknowledged the landowner, Her Majesty the Queen (who was presumably not in attendance, having another engagement at Windsor).

Could be that the underlying reason for having the freedom to roam (a widespread appreciation for spending time in nature) also leads to a good environment for orienteering.

Right Cristina. Sort of an omitted variable thing.

Allemansrätten certainly does not allow competitions with 100's of participants without permission from landowners. As a an individual (or training group) you have freedom to roam in privately owned forests, but you can't hold events.

Yes, of course the sport is well recognized and generally private landowners are fairly forthcoming, but there are exception. Our club has two great maps/areas where the private landowner is refusing permission for an event.

Developing and maintaining good relationships with landowners and other interest groups (e.g. hunters) is very important here also.