The purchased forest (15k hectares, 37k acres) is therefore ~1.3% of the region.
Palantir founder purchases large swath of forest in Sweden (arctictoday.com)
76 pointsby davidjaan hour ago62 comments
Jabbles an hour ago
Note that the red area on the map in the article is Härjedalen, which has an area of 11,405 km^2, 1.1M hectares, 2.8M acres.
robin_reala an hour ago
That’s a strange map in the article. It makes it looks like he’s bought all of Härjedalen, rather than two orders of magnitude less. It’s still a chunky piece of land, but it’s definitely not that big.
sorenjan 28 minutes ago
I don't know exactly where the land is, but according to media it's south of Storsjö kapell [0]. There's plenty of fell there, and he can't just build whatever he wants even if he owns the land. When a billionaire says he spent $22 million to by it for recreation, I don't see a big reason to not believe him, there's not much else he can use it for.
It's not far from Funäsdalen which is a relatively popular ski resort [1], there are also hiking trails and similar [2].
The seller SCA is Europe's biggest private forest owner and owns 2.7 million hectares by the way.
[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/hQp2Rw9tM6kWTuTdA
[1] https://funasdalen.se/en/winter/skiing/cross-country-skiing/
dylanz an hour ago
He's a huge cross country skier so he probably wants his own little playground
LucaFromAlpha an hour ago
what's that meme about rich people just doing really rich stuff and not worrying about being some BS worldly image? yeah that.
conorcleary 19 minutes ago
Probably as retaliation to SAAB.
theropost an hour ago
Why does it quote 37,000 acres, then show a picture with a large swath of Sweden highlighted as if that is the area purchased - though Sweden is approximately 111 million acres of land, so this would be 0.003% of the land, so nowhere near the representation in this picture - seem disingenuous to me.
bpodgursky an hour ago
$600/acre for timber forest???
I had no idea Sweden was this cheap. Why wouldn't he drop $22mm on this...
mahboi an hour ago
Guessing it's more expensive if you're buying less, otherwise I kinda want to buy 4 acres.
robin_reala an hour ago
Cheapest I can find in Härjedalen with at least 4 acres is this 70 acre plot for 400k SEK or 40.2k USD: https://www.hemnet.se/bostad/gard-harjedalens-kommun-overber...
s1artibartfast 8 minutes ago
not really comparable. That looks to a parcel with road and and nearby power access, within a few km of a small town that has an airport.
Quite cheap tho!
nazgulsenpai an hour ago
Perhaps there's a reason Sweden wants him to have all of this land.
Hikikomori an hour ago
No he can fuck off please
moralestapia an hour ago
Nothing to see here. There's no corruption in the civilized world, even less in Nordic countries which are maximally developed culturally and socially.
Ekaros an hour ago
It is somewhat north. So I would expect potential income to be in line. Thus price can be relatively low and there still is not much profit.
sorenjan 25 minutes ago
Considering where it is it might be protected from logging, so the economic value of the land might be low. The seller is a paper manufacturer, so if they could get more value from it they would have charged more.
silverFork an hour ago
Ai farm to be.. I suspect.
david_shaw an hour ago
> Ai farm to be.. I suspect.
I suspect the opposite: a billionaire's escape from a potentially turbulent society.
silverFork 35 minutes ago
Could be.. zillionaires usually like mountains; I hear he can't drive; driving the boonies far from civilization is not that easy in the winter. He needs to buy a big shovel for the winter.
john_strinlai 29 minutes ago
>I hear he can't drive; driving the boonies far from civilization is not that easy in the winter. He needs to buy a big shovel for the winter.
that's what helicopters are for.
-zillionaires, probably
silverFork 21 minutes ago
He needs a landing strip for an aircraft. Helicopters are dangerous at night. No uber eats delivery there. We will see. It will take a decade to set it up.
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 24 minutes ago
or... just plain old land speculation?
silverFork 9 minutes ago
Yup it could be but speculation needs a cause.. Hard assets are the rage right now anyways for AI zillionaires. He has apparently bought a monastery in Colorado for $120M; Miami beach house for $55M; 500 acre land in New Hampshire. His net worth is about $20B, $22M is like buying a toy to him and it is not a major investment.
nalekberov an hour ago
> Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, purchased 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of forest in Härjedalen, Sweden, for 235 million kronor ($22 million).
Seems like he could buy all of Sweden's forests if he wanted to.
NewJazz an hour ago
But would he still have Palantir? Also a large portion of thr forests are likely in public trust, and they'd be hesitant to sell all of it I'd think. Especially to one person with no track record of land management.
blondie9x 43 minutes ago
Do we know what the goal was? Was this to protect forest land? Similar to something like this? https://www.nicfi.no/2024/12/10/norway-strengthens-support-o...
NewJazz 27 minutes ago
Bunker.
Noe2097 19 minutes ago
Wow, that would make such a nice area to train (military) drones & robots, and in the middle of a country concerned by "noisy neighbors"
... Wait
bigbuppo an hour ago
I mean, the first thing I did when I came into money was buy a couple thousand acres of land.
mertleee an hour ago
Assuming this is for conservation, it's hard to find reasons this is a bad thing.
mcarper826 an hour ago
agreed
fnordpiglet an hour ago
This is where he will build 50 silos
xhevahir an hour ago
He's probably buying it so that he can ski through miles of virgin forest with his Norwegian bodyguards. I hate this weirdo but he's probably not going to do much to the landscape.
eckelhesten an hour ago
Weak reason given that Sweden has something called Allemansrätten.
Hikikomori 34 minutes ago
Let's hope people will use it and invade his land whenever he visits.
defrost 9 minutes ago
Lagniappe: Mass trespass of Kinder Scout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_trespass_of_Kinder_Scout
gizajob 17 minutes ago
What about fences? I see that people have the right to roam but how are fenced-off areas dealt with?
elias_t an hour ago
They probably already have nano technology
mahboi an hour ago
Why would Alex Karp randomly buy Swedish forest for conservation?
unreal6 an hour ago
It is well known he loves to nordic ski
https://fortune.com/well/2023/02/03/billionaire-palantir-ceo...
xhevahir an hour ago
Skiing. He arranges his life around Nordic skiing to an incredible degree.
mahboi an hour ago
Ok that makes a lot more sense
fhdkweig an hour ago
I don't really know anything about skiing, but can you do that in a virgin old-growth forest?
rafram an hour ago
Who said it's a virgin old-growth forest?
Ekaros 40 minutes ago
I too doubt it is actually old-growth. Probably industrial forest. Which means that there is plenty of space around most of the trees.
raddan an hour ago
Yes. All you really need are paths. This is a bit of an overgeneralization since forests in different places have different growth habits, but many old growth forests have less underbrush. During the winter, these forests are pretty easy to navigate on Nordic skis. If he wants to skate instead of doing the classic stride, I’m sure he can afford to groom the paths. Grooming really just requires a fancy snowmobile.
daneel_w an hour ago
It might not get to remain a virgin old-growth forest. If the Swedish logging companies can get away with it, he probably can, too.
germinalphrase an hour ago
Potentially. Depending on the style of skiing, you may only need a 2-3 ft wide pathway. That said, ski paths tend to be cleared of trees/large rocks and span about 10-15 feet wide.
sorenjan 23 minutes ago
It's not far from a skiing resort.
https://funasdalen.se/en/winter/skiing/cross-country-skiing/
cryptolobster an hour ago
It still seems a bit strange
fragmede 13 minutes ago
Couldn't let the Netflix guy buy up the one in Utah and have bragging rights.
fhdkweig an hour ago
Trying to buy himself back into heaven, like Bill Gates did. We only have the article's quotation for evidence, but it does say:
> Karp made the purchase through his newly registered company Cladonia Skog AB. The chairman of Cladonia told the Swedish newspaper that the land provides valuable habitat for wildlife and space for recreation.
colordrops an hour ago
He plans to create a ground for hunting humans, a la "The Most Dangerous Game".
moralestapia an hour ago
I wouldn't be surprised.
Karp strikes me as the type of person that would do this "for fun".
jacquesm an hour ago
Why would you assume that?
popalchemist an hour ago
why the hell would you assume altruism of the man who takes pride in killing people with automations
Naillik an hour ago
What are your reasons for assuming that would be the motive of the Palantir founder?
subscribed an hour ago
This is a quite far fetched assumption.
I can't recall anything he said or did in the last few years that would make me assume he's done something good for the general public (or the humanity), and not for himself first and foremost.
eichin 40 minutes ago
Maybe he wants his own version of Nathan's estate in Ex Machina (redditor calculations from in-movie clues put it at 7 million hectares, though, so this isn't even close :-)