Ladonia: An Illegally Created Nation Where Creativity Rules

http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/02/18/ladonia_in_sweden_is_a_micronation_built_around_nimis_a_driftwood_sculpture.html

by wikiburner • 12 years ago

48 53 12 years ago

slate.com

lcasela• 12 years ago

We need more mirconations.

Natsu3• 12 years ago

Given that apparently all it takes is for someone to "declare" an unrecognized micronation, I hereby declare one particular square micron in international waters, known only to me, as the world's new smallest unrecognized micronation: Nanotopia. Our motto will be "never found, never conquered." We allow dual-citizenship so long as you don't tell anybody.

bpicolo2• 12 years ago

Picostan would like to formally declare war against Nanotopia.

theklub• 12 years ago

Get a giant boat and park it out in international waters.

dijit• 12 years ago

I had considered the possibility of purchasing an island and having actual people living and working with me.

a bunch of my friends on IRC were very keen on the idea, although I don't suspect they know what burden it would entail.

yes, we'd be able to set up our own privacy policies and, yes we can have super fast internet, lay our own fiber and infrastructure of that nature could be created.

however, agriculture, the bureaucratic hoops we'd have to jump through to successfully secede and the general hard work and labour that would have to go in, I believe, is unaccounted for.

this is a cool concept, and micronations are a nice idea, I just wish I could find a plot of land that's not owned, I'd definitely put a lot of hard work into getting out of my country.

the_watcher• 12 years ago

How do you lay your own fiber and actually get connectivity? I've always wanted to try and take complete control of my internet, but as I understand it, the most I could do is last mile.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Actually you can, if you choose to, work out with a metropolitan area to put fiber between any two points, working with states to get it between states is more work and really needs a small staff to keep track of all the action items (you'll meet a lot of politicians). There are some dusty workable rules laid over from the AT&T breakup in the US that require some access rights.

The last time I priced it out (I was depressed about my choices) it was about $125K to get a fiber between my house and the nearest peering point (PAIX, which is slightly closer than MAE-West). That was about $10K per mile. Once you get there you need to find an IP transit provider to hook up with. Lots more choices than 'cable' or 'dsl' though :-)

scarecrowbob• 12 years ago

The businesses that serve up to that last mile will vend to folks. At least, out here in the sticks in texas, there are guys who have businesses laying wire and building towers-- you'd call one of them and have them get service, just like time warner or whoever does when they want service in an area. Not cheap, but if you have a business or a community, that's what you do, as I understand it.

lmm• 12 years ago

If you want to peer with one of the core ISPs you'd probably need to be serving something compelling your side, or at least be willing to pay massive penalties for an imbalanced flow. Even at that level there's nothing magic about the process: you sign a contract with them that says you'll connect your networks together.

Zikes• 12 years ago

It's my understanding that if you discover an unclaimed island it is then automatically claimed by the country of origin of the discoverer.

erichocean• 12 years ago

Kind of like working for Google, or any other tech giant. Lovely.

sjs382• 12 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6395148

rayiner• 12 years ago

however, agriculture, the bureaucratic hoops we'd have to jump through to successfully secede and the general hard work and labour that would have to go in, I believe, is unaccounted for.

That, and the inevitable descent into savagery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies.

return0• 12 years ago

We don't really need more countries, rather we need different countries. Globalization has made the west one giant colorless cat-video-loving nation. Hence the interest in micronations, seasteading and other "alternative citizenships".

john_b• 12 years ago

"the bureaucratic hoops we'd have to jump through to successfully secede"

My understanding of secession has always been that one does not ask for permission. Requests to pay taxes, for example, would fall on deaf ears. Otherwise you've not seceded, you're just on vacation.

Houshalter2• 12 years ago

Total self-sufficiency is nearly impossible or at least extremely difficult. If you allow external trade it might be doable, although then you have to actually produce something of value, and trade it without bringing the government down on you.

Although I wonder, what kinds of technologies would you need to achieve complete self-sufficiency? It's a practical question too because that's what we would need them to settle mars and the moon, not to mention other solar systems.

Perhaps you could get a lot done with robots, it depends on the task.

Houshalter2• 12 years ago

I believe there was a group on reddit that tried to do this.

stevesearer• 12 years ago

I might be reading this story incorrectly, but it seems like Ladonia is just a normal piece of property which is owned by artists who issue "citizenship".

Is there some other quality I am missing that separates it from any other piece of property someone owns, creates a website for, and calls a micronation?

kalleboo2• 12 years ago

I used to live in the municipality where there is going on.

The most interesting part is the legal wrangling.

It's not private property - it was built with driftwood in a public nature preserve. The authorities wanted it gone, but first of all - it's natural driftwood - is that illegal? Well, it turned out to be. So the artist sold the sculpture itself to some uncontactable people outside of the country, and suddenly the municipality couldn't just order him to remove it, and so on and so forth. He then built another sculpture of cement with hundreds of numbered rocks, and sold each rock to a different person, in order to spread the "blame" further.

Eventually it got so popular it became a local tourist attraction. And so it still stands.

edit: Aside from that it's just a kooky artist doing kooky things. Lars Vilks in infamous in Sweden for his stunts. He's also been outspoken in free speech issues which has made him a target of Muslim fundamentalists.

adisbladis• 12 years ago

Not really.. It's just as much of a country as my apartment is.

The artist in question has also had lots of media attention for his work depicting Muhammed (the prophet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Vilks#Muhammad_drawings_c... The guy is a racist nutjob.

kalleboo2• 12 years ago

I doubt he's racist. He's more of an offline troll.

jere2• 12 years ago

He's a racist nutjob for drawing "Muhammad as a roundabout dog"? Or is there something else?

_mans_• 12 years ago

Living close to the so called country I can confirm that your suspicions are mostly correct. The land is owned by the government (afaik) and is not a private property by the artist. From time to time the government threatens to destroy his buildings, but since they have survived this long they can mostly be seen as empty threats.

yxhuvud• 12 years ago

You are reading it wrong. The property is owned by the Swedish government.

The artists are simply fucking around.

owenversteeg• 12 years ago

Does anyone else hate how the horizontal scrollbars make you want to scroll left (with your arrow keys) and then it turns out that this is the command to go to another article?

drdeca• 12 years ago

Probably, yes.

donretag• 12 years ago

At first, I thought it was a nation created by those that speak Ladin, which would not be surprising considering the autonomous stature of the region.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin_language

davidw• 12 years ago

They actually don't have much of an incentive to form their own country - they get piles of money from Italy and Austria as well.

Indeed, Sud Tirol is often cited as a good example of how to handle a linguistic/cultural minority, which mostly involves the aforementioned piles of money, and a lot of freedom to use their own language. In the Ladin speaking area, almost all the signs, for instance, are in Ladin/Italian/German. In the German speaking area, they're in German and Italian.

ivanca2• 12 years ago

Such a moronic title: all nations are created illegally, if you believe otherwise show me the paperwork of the USA territory, signed by all previous residents (native Americans)... and no, their graves do not count as a signature under any legal definition.

sp332• 12 years ago

Not nearly "all" nations are created illegally. Try the Czech Republic and Slovakia, for example. And what about the Algonquin Nation, were they created illegally?

my_username_is_• 12 years ago

While you do offer good counterexamples, these are more the exception than the rule

parfe• 12 years ago

A legally created nation came into existence three years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sudan#Independence_.28201...

protomyth4• 12 years ago

Sadly, there are pieces of paper with signatures on them. Its amazing how scummy the US government got in trying to "legitimize" the land forfeitures. Even sadder how some folks today want to throw out was actually signed and steal the rest.

throwaway092834• 12 years ago

To be fair there's some circular reasoning here. A contract itself is only valid and legal according to the law of a particular nation. Those pieces of paper had no equivalence of legal meaning in the Native American culture prior to the founding of the colonies and the forced application of English common law.

rmc• 12 years ago

Ireland?

marc0• 12 years ago

I consider it an enormously antiquated idea to bind nations to a piece of land. We should try to arrive at a more abstract definition. And yes, of such nations we need many more.

zem• 12 years ago

you might enjoy doctorow's "eastern standard tribe", which, while not one of his better books, had some nice ideas. the premise was that the kind of people who spent large amounts of their time hanging out online would coalesce into tribes based around timezones, and that the timezone you were physically living in would not necessarily correspond to the tribe you belonged to and arranged your waking hours to match.

supersystem• 12 years ago

"Goaded, Vilks ignored the announcement and decided to take control of the area and secede from Sweden"

The whole secession would be somewhat more believable if the police protection of Vilks didn't costs the Swedish tax payers about a million USD per year.

Ladonia: An Illegally Created Nation Where Creativity Rules

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