Going off-grid - tips and advice welcome

[campingcapy]

Hi everyone!
Not sure this is the right place to post but I'm after tips and advice about going off-grid.
Location: we're thinking Scandinavia as it's wild camping allowed. French Atlantic coast is nice but you can't camp there.
Stuff: What to take, essential or useless.
How: Is a bike the best way? Of can you suggest anything else?
Money: Can you really do that with hardly anything.
Experience: There are lots of blogs but I'm after your story, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Food: Can you really live off nature?
Hygiene: Where do you wash lol
Thanks.
CampingCapy

 

[Janne]

You can not live 'off nature' in Scandinavia without somr serious investments first.
Too cold, not enough wild food for foraging to sustain you year round

 

[campingcapy]

Have you tried it?

 

[mrcharly]

For how long?
Static or travelling?

Do you mean living off grid or living off the land? Those are different things; I've lived 'off-grid' in a city (on-board a small barge). I definitely wasn't living off the land.

 

[Big G]

Might be best attending a bushcraft - outdoor living course.. gain some experience first?

Before heading off in to the wilds of another country.. or go with someone who's lived off-grid.

 

[Trojan]

Maybe you should tell us your experience first? Background? etc

 

[Janne]

Have you tried it?

1979 - 1981 more than 60% of time spent outdoors, 2-3 weeks at a time, in Arctic Sweden with food supply that was calculated to last 75% of time. The only way we could get enough energy was by shooting reindeer ( legally I should add) and fishing with a handgrenade when the lakes were ice free. (we were allowed to do that). We still lost weight.
We had state of the art equipment.
Summertime you can find edible vegetable matter to augment the fish and meat diet.
Late summer and early Autumn there are lots of berries to augment the animals.
Winter, if cold, you will die, end of. Difficult to get water, difficult to get meat. No vegetable matter, only source of Vit C is brewing pine shoots. and in late winter other tree shoots.
Spring time, some vegetable food available ( very little) and you can not hunt as they have babies.

To survive Winter and Spring you need to gather and preserve berries, meat, fish and wood. You need lots of that.

Should you fall ill or get damaged, you might survive. Might.

There is a reason there never were people living like that (hunter gatherers) in Scandinavia since more than 3000years.

You need to live with a group that help each other with the tasks.

 

[Janne]

Another valid points:
You are not allowed to own and a firearm without a permit.
You are not allowed to live on somebody's land without permission.
You are not allowed to cut down trees.
You are not allowed to fish without a permit.
You are not allowed to hunt without a permit, and then only licensed, certain animals, in the allowed hunting season.
And after Brexit, you are not allowed to live in Sweden or other Scandinavian ( European?) countries without a work Permit.

I hope I do not sound negative, because I am not. This is the reality, unfortunately. I wish we lived in a different, freer world!


Edit: Wild camping in Scandinavia: You are allowed to stay one or a few nights anywhere, but you must stay away from a certain distance from houses, not damage fields. No leaving any mess behind. Basically - leave the site exactly as it was before you came. Lots of rules. Check out the internet.

 

[campingcapy]

You seem to know a lot about everything especially Brexit lol