In Sweden at least, "allemansrätten" as a law, comes from a change made in the 40s, to resolve conflicts between city dwellers need for "friluftsliv" and landowners, in-favor of the former.

Since 1994 "allemansrätten" is part of the constitutional law, securing the right for everyone to go anywhere under certain circumstances (cant stay longer than a couple of nights in the same place, cant stay within eyesight of a permanent resident etc etc)

> cant stay within eyesight of a permanent resident

The fact that this is practical is a consequence of low population density. In places like the Netherlands there practically are no localities where one is outside eyesight of a permanent resident, besides national parks.

No, that isn't it. Have you been to say the US or Australia (both very low density)? "Private property NO TRESPASSING" signs everywhere. Very few official trails. If you want to walk from A to B you better have one of those trails or you find yourself walking next to a road (without sidewalk).

Compared to here (high population density, Germany) or say the Alps, where you can use any road used for forestry or farming. The only thing you can't access is small gardens in relatively high density villages.

If I would research this, I would look at historical evidence of how free the peasantry class have been in relation to landowners, and how the society was set up under feudalism, the extent of serfdom, and see how strong that correlation is with current right-to-roam regulations.

I think Scandinavian peasants were alone in Europe to never have been serfs. Which probably has cultural effects even today.

One explanation I've seen is that if the nobility got to aggressive, Swedish peasants could always go hide in the forest for a while.

...which is something you can do in a low population density land, and we're full circle :)

The Black Death also helped a lot. It reset a lot of property relationships by leaving a lot of free land after farmers and their whole families died out - in Norway it took about 200 years before most of the farms were back in operation, and when the population was expanding again there were tax breaks for restarting farms. We can see the extent of it today in the prevalence of last names like Ødegård, Ødegaard and similar (literally "deserted farm"), and similar place names.

Danish peasants were serfs for a period:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stavnsb%C3%A5nd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vornedskab

Sounds more like what China is doing, you need a pass to move to the city.

Forests in Europe are not exactly unique to Scandinavia.

Thing is much of the peninsula due to the climate can support only marginal agriculture and hence only a very limited peasant population. Not enough pop density to establish any sustainable lifestyle for nobility.