The iron rock's journey from space ended with a thud in a dense pine forest, about an hour north of Stockholm, around 10pm on a November night four years ago.
Interestingly, its trajectory was captured by several cameras in the region used to track meteorites. That led to a week-long search and an even longer court battle over an unusual question: Who owns an out-of-this-world object that falls to Earth?
The legal case took another turn on March 21, when an appeals court ruled in favor of the land owneroverturning a decision that had favored the two men who had recovered it.
Days after the rock fell, Anders Zetterqvist, a geologist, found the place where it first hit the ground. After several weeks of searching, his friend Andreas Forsberg, a fellow geologist, found the 13.6 kilo piece in the moss where he had bounced, about 70 meters away. “For me it was the find of my life,” he said.
After a few weeks, the men carried the rock to the Swedish Museum of Natural Historywhere it has been kept since 2020. “We were afraid that hundreds of people from all over the world would come looking for more,” Forsberg said.
In the global market for private collectors, one like this could fetch tens of thousands of dollars, said museum researcher Dan Holtstam.
Approximately a week after the geologists made their discovery public, the owner of the farm where the meteorite was found, Johan Benzelstierna von Engestrom, sent a letter to the museum claiming ownership. Thus the legal battle broke out.
In December 2022, the Uppsala District Court ruled in favor of the geologists and considered the meteorite a chattel. “A freshly fallen meteorite is not part of the property on which it fell”the judge wrote.
But Judge Robert Green, one of the appeals court judges, said the case hinged on two issues: Whether meteorites could be considered “real estate” property and the scope of a Swedish customary law, known as “Allemansrätten”, which establishes the right of public access.
The Allemansrätten allows everyone in Sweden to move around in nature, including hiking or camping, even on private property. “That includes a certain right to take berries and even small stones”Judge Green said. The plaintiffs argued that the right to pick up small things could include valuable items.
But Judge Green said in the ruling: “We have assessed that the closest thing is within our power to consider the meteorites or space rocks as part of real estate like other stones, although intuitively it may seem that a meteorite is something foreign to Earth.” (The owner said he plans to give the rock to a museum on permanent loan.)
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