Norway’s Island with a Population of 1 | Hacker News Reader

Norway’s Island with a Population of 1

bbc.com

71 pointsMiriamWeiner15 comments

>> Its two boats – Stjernesund, which accommodates up to 28 people, and Sulejet, carrying up to 16 – also offer twice-daily passenger service for locals year-round [...] Gåsvær is flexible with timings and allows passengers to call in advance to book their spot for 55 kroner (about £5).

I'm missing something here. How can 55 kroner possibly cover the cost of doing anything with such vessels? I assume there is some sort of government backing for this service. That is all well and good, but I live in an area with similar problems (Coastal BC). Maintaining services to remote villages is one thing, subsidizing the retirement dreams of a lucky few is another.

These boats are funded from the same government budget that is used to maintain roads I think.

Countries often oversubsidize homesteaders at the edges of their territory for strategic protection of that territory. If another country wants to encroach on land it’s much harder with a population there. Russia is seeing this encroachment happen on their Chinese border.

Indeed. That is basically what canada does with the north. The touchy subject is determining where and if such frontiers exist. And, should they become popular, whether such support should be extended to subsidizing a tourist industry. BC has gone so far as to demolish some remote ghost towns (mining towns) because we don't want them to become tourist destinations.

If you have the time, there are some great youtube vids of Kitsault BC, the famous 1980s ghost town in BC.

I'm not sure why this is being downvoted, because it's true.

In the '60s or '70s, the Canadian government actually forced a large group of native people to move from their native lands in Nunavik (northern Quebec) to the far north, where nobody or nothing lived, except seals and fish. I believe this was so that the Canada could claim that they had sovereignty over the Arctic because people lived there, unlike Antarctica. Imagine being dumped on a frozen wasteland thousands of km from civilisation with a few supplies and being told to deal with it, with no recourse. Many people died.

Didn't the article say they were running postal services? I assumed that funds the boats, and the passenger transfer is a bonus?

Maintaining services to remote villages is one thing, subsidizing the retirement dreams of a lucky few is another.

Ultimately I imagine it balances out. There's not going to be a library, school, or much road maintenance or healthcare going on in places like that. Subsidizing a boat to a place so remote that a heart attack is basically a death sentence seems a small thing to me in the greatest scheme of things.

You will get all those services at the place the boat goes to.

Norway has for many years subsidized remote areas. So much of Norway is very pictoral but is very remote and keeping people living there has high priorty of strategic and historical value.

The point is that it should cost the "same" to live out in "nowhere" and more centrally, so the government pays for the service.

In reality public transports cost from free, to 10 kroner to 50+ based on where you live. It is normally cheapest where people dont use it, to make a incentive for them to use it more. So in Oslo it costs 36 kroner per ticket (where everyone use it) and in some small/medium sized cities it cost 10 kroner.

Other sea transportation services does not need to be subsidized as they are commercially viable, but they still do to be able to enforce a demand like gas powered ferries or the new trend that is battery powered ferries.

But even if the government pay for the service, the service is often privately owned. That means the company has won a public bid for a contract for x years.

Reminds me of Port Hood Island in Nova Scotia.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/port-hood-island-...

I'm reminded of Lofoten, a peninsula and group of islands way further north in Norway that's a very popular summer tourist destination. It's absolutely beautiful. I wonder why Lofoten has thrived while Solund has not? Relative size of landmass has to be part of it.

Lofoten is unique. The rise of social media, the non-stop posts of its picturesque landscape sells it to the masses. The infrastructure is better, it's bigger and there are a lot of inhabitants, hotels and whatnot. Solund is tiny compared to the Lofoten region.

Lofoten also has quite a long history of fishing making it known in international trade.

I think in Greece there are similar cases in small islands eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_of_Ro

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