Around four months ago we left from Greece together with my partner, my dog and my cat, and we came all the way to Sweden by ferry and car, because it was unbearable to live in Greece anymore, mainly due to heatwaves and wildfires which occur every year and make every summer in Greece worse than the previous one.
How and why we became climate migrants
We were living in Evia island, the 2nd biggest island in Greece which is just 1,5 hours drive from Athens (a bridge connects it to the mainland). I went to live there just four years ago, after purchasing an olive grove and installing in there a tiny house on wheels which is operating solely on solar panels and gets water from a spring source. My plan was to set up there an off the grid farm sanctuary. However, Evia lost most of its forest in the Northern part of the island due to wildfires that occurred in 2021 and part of the forests in the Southern part of the island that occurred in 2023. During the summers of 2024 and 2025, several forests of the central part of the island have been lost as well. Draught, heatwaves and wildfires became the norm for Evia island over the last three years whereas when I had just moved in my tiny house, I experienced 10 days non stop rains and an island full of green natural landscapes.
Last year, while we were away to a remote beach, one of the many too hot days of July, someone texted me that a helicopter is on top of my house and is trying to extinguish a fire. This person didn’t go to my house to reassure me that it was not in danger, and to be honest, I didn’t care much about it, as I cared about my dogs and my cat. We were driving as fast as we could to go back, while trying to call other people in the village, asking them how serious the fire is and where it is located exactly. Eventually, my home wasn’t threatened by this fire and my pets were O.K. The fire was a bit higher than where my home is located, and it was set by a monk (I never understood how exactly) outside of his monastery. Due to the monasteries in that area, firefighters always respond very quickly whenever there is a fire so at least there is that.
In any case, the bottom line here is that I could no longer live my whole life under the pressure of climate anxiety (or eco-anxiety, a form of distress and fear related to the climate crisis, which can include feelings of helplessness, anger, grief, and worry about the future. It is a natural and understandable emotional response to the real threat of climate change, and it is not a clinical diagnosis, but it can significantly interfere with daily life) so I took the difficult decision of leaving my dream home and migrate to Sweden, and to become like this, one of the first climate migrants. There, we found other climate migrants, a couple from Spain and Italy, who had migrated to Sweden with 3 kids in 2022 because they were facing similar issues in Spain and then in Italy. This family has even bought two houses in Sweden. Them in Spain and us in Greece, experienced what it is like to live with very little to no water as Barcelona has serious issues with the water reserves and the same applies to Evia island. Since 2021 when I moved there, as I am a Nature lover, I was visiting all the wetlands, gorges, mountains, lakes, rivers…and I was witnessing how quickly the water stop existing in all these natural settings from that year until 2025, it is SCARY to say the least. Even my house, the first year had a stream beneath and I could listen to the water sounds when I was walking in the olive grove. My very home stopped having water during the summer of 2023 because the spring source emptied in July, and for 1,5 months we had to bring water daily in big plastic bottles of 10L on top of paying twice some locals who came with their vehicles to fill my tank which I had for such emergency situations (however I wasn’t expecting this emergency situation to occur that fist nor to last that long). I obviously bought one more tank and by this way we managed to keep alive all the trees that we have planted there by then, the huge veggie garden with the pumpkins and all. The plants were all deeply affected by the heatwaves of course and they only started giving fruits after the summer, in October. The water came back only after it rained again in August.
This year, something similar happened just recently, in November. I am so relieved that I am no longer there to witness one more time, in the middle of Autumn this time (so alarming) the spring source to be empty.
Falling in love with Sweden
So, we arrived in Sweden at the end of July, and we were so happy to have found a house in the forest of Bokeslund, in the area of Höör. The house has a big garden and it’s ideal for my pets. I always select houses based on my pets needs. So, even if I was feeling that I am done with isolation and I may wanted to already move somewhere closer to an urban area, I didn’t want to bring them close to any city, I didn’t want them to go back to where we started our nomadic life from (a suburb of Athens). Since 2018 when I left the city once again, I have been living with my pets away from any urban settings, with 0 noise or light pollution around us. And it has been a bliss for them. Oh, the bliss of rural life…
We enjoyed three months living in the forest, walking Caramelo the dog to the forest, exploring new pathways in each walk…sometimes my cat Tsifki would join too. It has been so green, exactly what our eyes and soul needed. So fresh, away from heatwaves. So wet, with so many rainy days…
Witnessing the destruction of a forest in Höör
But of course nothing lasts forever, and as if someone cursed us for leaving for a better future, ten days ago we started witnessing the destruction of the forest next to our home in Bokeslund, Höör. I had already seen part of it some time ago, during my walks with Caramelo, but I was thinking that it would “only” be a small land that someone was stupidly destroying in order to build a house. I wish…
Since ten days ago, I have been listening to the trees cracking, falling down, sounds that so far I had only experiencing when watching video clips of the destruction of the Amazon ..I wake up from the noise of the chain saws and no matter how much I tried to stop it, I just can’t. My partner and I, we have been both calling and exchanging emails with several authorities to ask why this is happening, to ask if there is a way to stop it, to no avail though. The land is owned by a rich guy who lives in a nearby city, and he wants to sell the wood from these trees a.s.a.p because he needs the money to buy another land that he owns together with his brother, as far as a neighbor told me.
I spoke with several neighbors about it and I am shocked to realized how they all accept it as something normal. “There is nothing we can do, this is how it is in Sweden. Sweden has this logging industry and they grow trees only to cut them down one day.” it’s what Swedes tell me. Then, there is this English neighbor who told me not to worry because “they will grow back” and he even told me the following speciesist line: “when they cleared the trees in front of where you live, they didn’t cut them all, they kept the oat trees because they are the important ones, for the insects”. As if I care for some trees but not for all. And what does he think that the trees are, octopuses? Go tell this to the deer, the foxes and all the birds that were living there but now lost their homes, I told him. But I should not expect anything different from him, since the day before this shitshow started, I saw on Facebook an announcement in the group of that neighborhood, about the hunting of the poor wild boars, which has also just started, and his wife had commented that it was about time, and it took them too long to order that. A couple who walk their dog daily, and goes back home to eat other animals, of course, would not think in a different way. This is the reality of speciesism.
And I wonder, who are we to differentiate the value between tree species? Who do we think we are, and which do we think is on Earth, the position of our species animal Homo Sapiens? Why do we think that we are superior to other species and why do we enforce human supremacy to all other species, plant and animal ones? When are we going to understand that the destructive way we live on Earth is only killing this planet and all other inhabitants?
The chronicle of trying to stop the unstoppable – the indifference of authorities
During these 10 days, I tried to contact several authorities and NGOs. We obviously started by calling the municipality but they said to all of us (more than just the two of us called or even went over), the same: The land is owned and this is legal so there is nothing they can do. This was the first shock to us because in Greece, in order to cut even just one tree, you ask from the municipality the O.K. In Belgium too, as someone told me today, and I guess that in many more countries this is the case. Then, we contacted the Swedish forest agency (Skogsstyrelsens) which first gave us wrong info on who owns the land claiming that it was the Swedish church and that if we wanted to complain about it we should directly reach out them (What the actual fuck?) and then, after we told them who owns the land in reality (public info easily found online in Sweden) directed us elsewhere for our report, which has been placed and we wait for updates since. (An article, in Swedish though, on how the Swedish church destroys forests, by the way, is this)
Only two people from two different NGOs replied with empathy. The first is called Skog supproret (which means forest destruction) and a nice lady who sadly resides in Germany though has been exchanging emails with me since I sent them the first emergency message. She guided me on how this could stop, but she told me from the beginning that when this starts it’s very hard to stop. However, she looked on the map and she told me that the area next to where we live has some important species in terms of biodiversity (again speciesist language, yes, but in that case, it’s just the argument that we could use against the logger to possibly stop the clearing of the forest) and also some archaeological value so maybe for these reasons, if the right authorities would learn about it, could possibly stop it. This nice lady also told me to contact Naturskyddsföreningen Höör because she thought that they conduct inventories for important (e.g endangered) species in the area. I did contact them too, but they are not the ones who do that sadly.
The only relieving part of this communication is that the person who replied showed empathy too and told us their own similar experience. In their case they had to move because they couldn’t stand looking at the house that was built where before were 80 trees standing. Which is exactly what we are going to do too. We already started contacting real estate offices, because we find it impossible to keep living next to a graveyard. The other day, my partner saw a deer eating grass at the garden of our neighbor. It was so sad to see this beautiful animal there, and then run away after seeing my partner. The animal was there because their home is destroyed.
To continue the narration of the shitshow, the other authority that we tried to called is the Länsstyrelsen Skåne (e.g the County Administrative Board of Skåne) who hasn’t been any helpful. They gave us two different phone numbers to call, one for the archaeologists and one for the biodiversity. The first ones gave my partner an email to send them the location but at the end they were proven useless as every other authority, as they told us that: “I can only look into if they plan to do soil scarification and replant. For that they can need a permit for interventions in or at an ancient find.” . The office for the protection of nature, never picked up the phone.
In the meantime, when everything started to take place very close to our home, after I heard the first tree falling, I went out to see where that is happening, and I found there the police and a journalist. I asked the police if what was going on is legal and she replied that yes, these men are here working. I asked the journalist his opinion about it but he said he had no opinion (how Swedish of him) and when I asked why he was there, he said because of the ambulance…I hadn’t heard of any ambulance but apparently one of the workers – killers of trees – had a tree falling on him, and he had to go to the hospital. For the next 3 days, no trees were cut down and I was hoping that due to the accident maybe they would have stopped.
During these silent days, a Swedish activist that I have met here, from Skåne, wrote (in Swedish) an opinion article about the destruction of the forest and sent it to some local journalists. One of them replied to her that he was the one that I met and that he was interested in writing an article. However, after he called me once and I didn’t pick up, he never picked up when I called back, nor replied to my texts. I think that he didn’t and won’t write anything about it.
But of course, I didn’t stop there. I sent more emails. I contacted a journalist who has written 2 articles so far, about the logging industry in Sweden, one is even a fourteen years article on Yale Environment 360 with the title “Sweden’s Green Veneer Hides Unsustainable Logging Practices” while the more recent one has been published just three years ago: “How unsustainable is Sweden’s forestry? ‘Very.’ Q&A with Marcus Westberg and Staffan Widstrand” and then even more recently, he edited another relevant article: Why Sweden’s forest policy matters to the world. Sadly, he didn’t want to write anything either as he is an editor nowadays, but anyway I don’t blame him. He has done already enough to expose this industry and as he said, my situation is regular and rampant, and the situation hasn’t changed much since he reported the investigation back in 2011. He gave me another organization to contact, which he thinks is the most active on the issue, my partner did contact them, and we wait for their reply. But we have no longer any hopes, and as the days are passing by, the destruction is coming closer and closer to our home.
Today, when we left home, we saw the path that we were walking with Caramelo, totally destroyed. This is how it was:
And I really can’t make a video to show you how it is now. I only walk Caramelo towards the other side, I don’t dare to walk towards that side. It’s a graveyard. The death can be seen and felt, especially by empaths and HSP.
The most ironic in all that is that lately the news from all over the world talk about how Sweden’s new doctor’s prescription to depression is “to take days off and go holiday in nature” and yet, they destroy their own nature. If they continue destroying it that fast, then the doctors will go back to prescribing antidepressants.
The cover photo is how the whole area looks now. Here’s one more photo:
During all these days, I spoke with another Swedish person that I know of, who has moved to Berlin though, and she told me how she has suffered in her years in Sweden similar situations. She told me about people who bought a house near a forest and then the forest was cut down and they couldn’t even sell the house because it lost its value after the forest was destroyed. And it made me think of me and my plan to buy a property in Sweden because this was my plan initially as I sold the flat where I grew up in Athens right before we came here, in order to come and buy a house in Scandinavia because here is the safest place to be in Europe, during the climate collapse. Here the summer doesn’t exceed 27 Celsius degrees, and floods don’t take place (yet) while wildfires are way less frequent. But do I want to buy a property here? Do I want to pay taxes in a country where they willingly destroy the forests in the name of capitalism while in my country of origin people fight to save the forests from wildfires? I don’t think that I want to, anymore. We will just move to another rent house, closer to the city of Lund which we love and it has parks which’s trees are not threatened to ever be cut down (what an irony, to have the artificial parks protected but not the natural forests) and we will probably get a campervan to be able to move from one place to another, as there is not one safe place anymore that a nature lover can be.
Some people may say that Sweden now has more dense forests than what it had 100 years ago but this is not an argument that’s valid for me. These forests are not biodiverse, neither do they have a rich habitat and of course they are not safe for the wild animals who live there. The logging industry doesn’t only cut the newer forests, which are planted, but also old forests. And from what I learned, clear cutting is taught in schools like SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences). And this is something that has been happening since 300 years ago… Also, if we compare a 100 year old forest with a 100 year old plantation, the differences in biodiversity is high, the plantation is not as much biodiverse. Approximately 70% of Sweden’s land area is forest (around 28 million hectares) but of this, less than 5% of Sweden’s forest land is old-growth forest with high natural values. The rest is plantations (information that I got from dr. Pete Jeffs who reports often about the insane bear killing that takes place in Sweden).
So here we basically have the clear image of Swedes slowly killing the biodiversity of their forests. And you know what’s killing it? The indifference of most people around the continuous crime who don’t react. The ones who accept it as something normal. As Einstein said “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything“.
The fact that the only way to avoid such a destruction is if there is an endangered species living there, drives me crazy.
Even before studying Biodiversity Conservation myself, when I learned that the species which can be protected by humans must be endangered, meaning being in the red list, otherwise they are “least concerned” – I couldn’t grasp it.
Why humans can’t protect a species in abundance?
What’s wrong with us anyway?
If you made it that far, dear reader, thank you. And please share it. There is nothing else left, than to share the atrocities that we are witnessing, since we can’t stop them, we the everyday people. Maybe one person with power (money) can do it instead. Like that Swedish billionaire who bought part of the Amazon to protect it. I really wonder why didn’t he buy the forests of his own country to protect those instead? I think that I don’t even want to know the answer.
Goodnight and good luck.
Elisabeth Dimitras