How Overlanders are Ruining Overlanding

foreign [Music] it's kind of like photography it's not a protected title so in the same manner as anyone with a camera calling themselves a photographer anyone traveling with a car can call themselves an Overlander so you can easily be an Overlander if you're traveling from let's say Norway to Africa in a Toyota Corolla and to be honest that's more of an adventure than most of these cars will ever see but why are overlanders ruining over landing and what's the problem here in Norway and the Scandinavian and Nordic countries in particular 2018 and 19 was the largest booming tourism here in Norway since ever because of the ever-growing popularity of the country on social media which is truthfully very good tourism brings in a lot of money and new jobs to the country so what's really the problem and Norway used to be somewhat of a summer destination for most people but the growing interest in Northern Lights polar nights and just snow course Landscapes has made this into a full year destination but with that much people coming to these small towns in Norway at the same time there is bound to be conflict and there's obviously a reason why there's no locals really wanting to live in the major hot spots for tourists in Central Europe and some of Norwegian towns are the next on that list but let's take it back to my scene traveling with a car hand in hand with the growing tourism it's also gotten quite popular to travel around the country with a Overland vehicle which if kitted out correctly you will be able to get to a lot of remote locations and also be self-reliant but if you're living somewhere in Central Europe and you're building a car like this either similar smaller or larger you will not really have anywhere to use that car in most countries in Central Europe you're not allowed to hike and pitch a tent wherever you feel like and you're obviously not allowed to drive your car wherever you feel like and sleep in that instead but in Norway on the other hand I'm allowed to walk wherever I feel like I can pitch a tent wherever I feel like and wherever I'm allowed to drive the car I'm also allowed to sleep in the car unless it's conflicting with some local laws because it's causing a problem in a major tourist spot for example but in Norway it's also 100 illegal to drive off-road period and I'm going to give a lot of people the benefit of the doubt and just assume that they mix these two up and think that because of the right to roam they're also allowed to drive the car into nature and just Camp there but that's a farce rich and because of mistakes like this overlanders and car Travelers in Norway are getting a bad reputation and after the massive tourist boom in 2018 and 19 you obviously had 2020 which turned out to be quite different than usual and being forced to travel around in our own country a lot of Norwegian guys also got into the Overland and rooftop 10 scene without really having any experience so they go online and the first thing they see is foreign cars traveling through the Norwegian hillsides doing illegal and lo and behold you had a whole new generation of people traveling with cars doing illegal and dumb things making the farmers and landowners pissed so even this place up here which used to be one of my favorite spots open for public use you now need to pay about 100 euros each year to have this key to be able to drive up here because the farmers are free to say you can't drive here and during the actual lockdown of 2020 I was living in the car up in the Arctic working for a rental company and I asked all officials and I was just ask to stay within the municipality borders and not travel anywhere and all other visitors with no reason to stay there because of work were asked to leave and everyone data apart from one group overlanders with huge trucks so I made a mental note of that but didn't really do anything because who am I to go over to people and say you're doing something wrong but it also painted a picture in my mind that there is this certain type of people traveling here which just does not care at all about local guidelines which brings us to the problem I'm talking about because there's a lot of people coming to Norway with the impression that you can just travel around and explore the country driving wherever you feel like in the highlands for example and it's actually gotten so bad that there's a Norwegian term just called German camper which is to describe a badly mannered camper yeah alfredo-san pulling up to your Camp spot leaving it looking like trash the next morning and because of this almost all information science all over the country is written in Norwegian English and German even though they're not even a neighboring country so I actually refuse to believe that some people come here and drive off-road by mistake whilst most Norwegians are super positive and welcoming to the Overland scene you might start to understand why some people are starting to get pissed off which brings us to what happened on my Instagram 24 hours ago I woke up and started scrolling through Instagram and one of the first Clips I saw was this huge semi-trailer of landrig driving through a glacial River a few seconds in I realized he had a Norwegian flag strapped on the car and he also tagged the location as Norway and like I've said driving fully off-road in Norway is not allowed and filming and passing something like this just invites the wrong crowd to the scene and digging a bit deeper I realized this guy has a hundred thousand people following him and several hundred thousand people had seen the video with him driving into the river in Norway so to begin with I left a comment on this video and said the following hey Norwegian here reason why more and more roads in Norway is closed for driving is because of stuff like this driving off-road in Norway is prohibited and driving in water is obviously not allowed either please stay on the lane and respect the country you visit and its loss it's also a reason why all the no camping or driving signs is also written in German and at the same time I also explained the issues in a private message and also added the possible consequences instead of just replying to this he decided to block me so I put it up on my Instagram to send my followers over to kind of send the same message so he just turned off the comments instead but being that active on social media kind of puts all of your information up for grabs so I sent him an email instead reading the following hi since your move was to block and restrict comments on Instagram I'll forward my DM here hi guys just wanting to inform you about the laws in Norway all off-road driving is forbidden that obviously also goes for the delicate most landscapes in the highlands and rivers full of Wildlife there is so much to see and do in my country without breaking this law plenty of mountain roads and lanes and I'd prefer if you keep on the track like most do the reason why a lot of these rows and camps are getting closed is because of people driving off-road and Through Rivers just to film something I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and guess that you don't know the laws in Norway if that's the case I'd love to see a post about you being mistaken and following the rules on the rest of your trip if it's not the case I'll hand over screen records and pictures from the routes you've taken with your license plate and face showing and simply hand it over to the nature reservation team here which will take it up with the police thanks and enjoy your stay and this is obviously kind of pity of me but like I've been trying to explain throughout the video this is not a single event surprisingly I actually got a reply on this email but at the same time as I read the reply one of my followers also sent over a video of one of the other guys these guys travel through the country with and I'll show you that video as I read their reply dear Casper thank you for your email keeping nature preserved is truly super important to us and we do respect nature and local rules we plan actually a series on nature pollution and conservation currently again thank you for bringing this important topic up we appreciate it thanks turns out this guy in the red Unimog has been driving through all of the Same Rivers and also crossed some of the Highland plateaus that has been left untouched since the last ice age and the video of him driving into this glacial River has a million views and the video caption says that he's driving to the dead and part of the road with nowhere to turn around so you had to turn around using the riverbed but a local girl sent me a picture from this Camp which clearly shows that you can turn a damn bus there and it's also a 150 meter backup to the main road and if that's a problem you should probably not drive a Unimog so I just kept on pushing and sent the same DM comment and email to this guy but he turned off comments as well and before you think well you can't delete that video it has a million views and that's worth so much to us content creators so let's just head over to my profile and delete one with a million views because it really should not matter and you're a grown man so it should definitely not matter to you as well after I put this up on my Instagram I'm still left standing without a reply from these guys but my followers did provide throughout the night I've been sent full names and addresses back in Deutschland and I've also been sent the exact location of where they drove into this River as well as contact information to the landowner and the municipality it's in and I've also been bombarded with messages from people from New Zealand Australia United States and Europe and it's a problem everywhere there is a bunch of different laws all over the place and in some places you're allowed to do a lot more than in others and when you travel to a new region it's simply your responsibility to read upon the last air not necessarily to avoid paying a fine but when you travel to a new place to experience that place you really don't want to piss off the locals Farmers lawn owners or police or even this random dude living in a car David in the red truck is already back home but you Thomas in the gray one you're still here so if you're going to travel through the rest of the country we would love it if you paid some respect to our country cheers

Channel: Kasper Høglund

Views: 596,504

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Id: VJyopr4M_Xg

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2023