One should be envious of anyone who got to spend their childhood at Axeltofta, even though what you see now is not how it used to be.

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​I came there during midsummer, when the place was still full of neighbours. I wanted to call them neighbours because it takes only five minutes to drive from my house to theirs.   I started taking photographs that included children and families, but I've decided not to publish them since I didn't get their permission.

 

Around the site, signs of celebration were already taking shape: buckets of flowers for the pole, barbecue smoke, a bouncy castle, music, prizes for the raffle, and the ordinary joy of gathering.

 

​My friend Felicia took me for a stroll and told me about growing up in the area: a backyard that felt like a jungle, close friends living nearby, cats moving between the houses, and small homes where each one seemed to have its own personality. Every house looked different. People grew vegetables, fruit, flowers, berries, and whatever the season allowed.

 

Back in school days, classmates were not always kind to them, she told me, because they thought people who lived there were poor.

 

“But I didn’t care,” Felicia said. “For me, this was freedom. I felt free here.”

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Michelle and her three siblings also spent many midsummers here. She told me about the candy rain, when sweets are thrown into the air, and children rush to catch as many as they can. She remembered the strategy: a dress wide enough to become an upturned umbrella. All the candies that could not escape.

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The motorway sits behind rows of thick bushes and trees. If you pay attention, you can hear the traffic. But most of the sound is softened by all the green. What remains more clearly are the birds, adding enchantment to the surroundings. You could forget that you were not on holiday.

 

It is slightly difficult to explain from the outside. Axeltofta is not an ordinary koloniområde (allotment). It is a place under decision. Landskrona city has decided that the area will be turned into a nature area, citing climate adaptation and future flood risk as reasons. Some residents have used the cottages as their real homes, even though permanent living there has not formally been allowed.

 

The paradox lives between what a place is on paper and what it has become through people’s lives.

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The modest disco ball hanging from the ceiling has witnessed birthdays, baptisms, national holidays, community evenings, and long years of tending to things that grow. Some people have known this place across generations. Some people know no other version of home.

 

A grandmother of seven, Camilla, holds one of her youngest grandchildren. She moved to the community just four years ago with the dream of growing old there.

 

I understand that life sometimes asks us to move. People are sometimes forced to move on. What I cannot understand is the hurry. Why this place? Why now? And why in this way?

 

The current reason given is connected to rising sea levels. But walking through Axeltofta, the question that remains is not only about climate. It is about process, timing, care, and whether people’s lives have been treated as something more than an administrative problem.

 

The residents were offered compensation to leave, but from what I understood, the amount appears to be barely enough to dismantle what they have built — not enough to support a real relocation, or to help people settle into a new phase of life.

 

Michelle said there is no simple way to pack decades of life into boxes.

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I know something about moving, and about the strange arithmetic of deciding what part of a life can fit into a box. For some people in Axeltofta, this is not simply a matter of packing up and moving. It is the yanking of roots.

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She showed me the home where she grew up. Her parents have already moved out of the cosy cottage they built, yet the place has not fully stopped being a home. The signs of TLC — tender loving care — remain in every corner. A small lamp still sits on the windowsill, its bulb glowing, as if ready to do its work the moment darkness falls.

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Outside the window lies their beautiful garden.

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What will happen to the cherry trees that bear fruit every year, the flowers that return each season, and the grapevine that took years of labour and care to grow into what it is today?

 

“At least we have time to pack,” Michelle said. 

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I wanted to agree, but I could not. Good people often find ways to be grateful, even while losing something. Yet, gratitude should not be used as an excuse to make loss easier for others to ignore.

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Some argue that people at Axeltofta should not have lived there permanently. Some point to rules, costs, water, infrastructure, and technicalities. 

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But I do not find these reasons good enough to explain why people who have done nothing wrong should be treated as if their lives are disposable.

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The name Axeltofta stays with me strangely. In my mind, it becomes a piece of soft, silky tofu being cut by a dull and giant axe. The image may not make linguistic sense, but I see fragments: pieces separated, stories cracked open, individual lives falling into the gap. I wonder who is holding the axe: the weather, the municipality, or something larger that no one wants to name?

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This place feels fragmented, like interrupted.

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Everywhere are signs of lives still present and already being removed, but a row of mailboxes is still hanging on poles, still waiting for what is next.

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To me, ordinary things are often where the deepest forms of belonging live.

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Michelle said that perhaps they should feel lucky compared with people who lost everything in the California fires. At the same time, this is not the same kind of loss as a natural fire or a sudden tsunami. Axeltofta is being erased through a planned, one-size-fits-all solution.

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If Axeltofta was never meant to become home, why was it allowed to receive the signs of home?

Why were people allowed to build lives, receive posts, raise children, and return season after season, until the place became part of who they are?

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It is a decision.

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And because it is a decision, it also asks for responsibility.

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Or we could just blame it on the weather.

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But the weather does not write policy. Weather does not decide how people are informed, compensated, moved, or cared for. The weather does not decide whether a community is treated as a problem or as a place where lives have taken root.

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Has the same risk logic been applied across different areas? Climate adaptation does not have to mean only removal. In other places, people have been offered fairer compensation, individual support, replacement possibilities, and a chance to take part in shaping what happens next.

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For many people here, Axeltofta was not a luxury, nor anything close to excess. It was a simple family life. What I find hard to accept is that people who already have little may be asked to lose even more.

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At one point, on the day when the light lasts the longest, I saw Michelle photographing the sunlight. I photographed her doing it. Perhaps this is the hardest thing to pack.​