A TINY village in Swedish Lapland is offering to pay people to move there, but there’s one little snag – you’ll need to have a child.
Located in northern Sweden, the number of residents in Glommersträsk has been slowly declining for the last 70 years.
Roughly 1,000 people lived in Glommersträsk in 1950, but now the village only has 200 residents.
And with just 23 primary school-aged children in the village, its local school may soon close.
This would follow the closure of Glommersträsk high school, which closed in 2009 because of the dwindling population.
In a bid to attract young families to the village, the local council is offering to pay people 10,000 Swedish Krona (£742) to move there.
Families will need children aged between 6 and 15 to be eligible to participate in the scheme, and only the first five families who move to the village will be able to claim the cash incentive.
Children will also need to spend one academic year at the primary school to qualify.
The Glommersbygdens Framtid Group (a local authority) will help families find housing and work in the area.
While British families can apply, they must obtain a Swedish residence permit first.
A spokesperson for Glommersbygdens Framtid described Glommersträsk as “a safe space where your children can grow up in a nice community” to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
One family has already moved to the Swedish village, with another applying under the scheme.
Local authorities hope more people will apply to move to Glommersträsk under the scheme.
Glommersträsk is a two-hour drive from Luleå, a coastal city in northern Sweden.
There, visitors will be able to go on an island-hopping cruise of the Luleå archipelago.
Home to more than 1,312 ever-changing islands, with visitors able to sometimes able to have an entire island to themselves.
Other attractions in Luleå include Teknikens Hus, a science centre where visitors can operate a truck, a train, a snow-scooter, a timber loader or an airplane
If the chilly winters aren’t your thing, there are plenty of other places across Europe trying to entice more residents with cash schemes.
The island of Antikythera was looking for more people to live there, as the younger population left for more job opportunities on the busier Greek islands.
Located between Crete and Kythira, it is 45 minutes by plane from Athens.
The island planned to offer €500 (£450) per month for three years to people who moved there, which worked out to £16,200 over the three years.
Candela, a tiny town in Puglia, is offered up to €2,000 (£1,800) for people to move there after the population had dropped from 8,000 to just 2,700 people.
It was €800 (£723) for single people, €1,200 (£1,085) for couples, up to €1,800 (£1,600) for three-person families and €2,000 (£1,800) for four-person families.
You needed to become a resident, along with a house and a job of at least €7,500 (£6,700) a year.
Sicily offered homes for just €1 (90p), with the only catch being the amount you need to spend to renovate them.
While they were not quite giving you money, they were giving a huge discount on homes.
The Palermo homes were in need of TLC, meaning at least €15,000 (£13,500) must have been spent to refurbish them within three years.
LAPLAND spans across the northern tip of Norway, Sweden and Finland, meaning it’s not somewhere you visit just once.
I’ve been fortunate enough to visit Finnish Lapland twice, with my most recent trip taking place last December.
On my whistle-stop tour through Finland, I managed to squeeze in an afternoon in Rovaniemi.
Home to the world-famous Santa Claus Village, there’s lots to keep families entertained from meet-and-greets with the big man himself to husky rides through the Finnish countryside.
Its biggest draw certainly has to be the prospect of seeing the Northern Lights.
Spotting the Northern Lights is never promised – it is a natural phenomenon after all – but holidaymakers head to Lapland with the hope they’ll be able to glimpse the Aurora.
Even with the light pollution, I was lucky enough to watch the lights dance in the sky above the city. It’s an experience I will never forget.
If you fancy starting up a business abroad, Ireland, Mauritius, and Chile all have programmes offering grants up to £40,000 to help you get your feet off the ground.
One couple recently bought an Italian townhouse at auction with € 1 and transformed it into an amazing holiday home.
