Everyone's right to power.

In Sweden, anyone may walk, camp and forage on land they do not own. The principle is called allemansrätten, the everyman’s right, and versions of it run across the Nordic countries. Most people rarely think about it. Yet it shapes how a society understands what belongs to everyone.

When I moved to Sweden as an energy journalist, I noticed what else shares that land. Transmission lines cross the forest. Turbines line the ridges. Rivers are dammed, hillsides mined. Wherever you roam, you walk past the systems that power the life you return to. If access to land is this foundational, so is access to power, and it is far less secure.

War in Europe, the AI buildout and surging industrial demand have pushed energy back to the center of politics. Grids are strained. Supply chains run through contested territory. Energy is becoming the bottleneck, the bargaining chip and, in some places, the instrument of coercion.

Allemans covers power in both senses: the electricity that runs the Nordics and the politics that decide who gets it. We report where the two collide, and where rights people take for granted are under threat.