This paper explores how the feeling of nostalgia influence the belonging to places which have suffered a symbolic meaning transformation and have come to be understood by the wider society as places left-behind (Wuthnow 2018). Building on 80 interviews and fieldwork it investigates how ‘fields of care’ (Tuan 1996) and a nostalgic sense of belonging can counteract moral and symbolic decline in two peripheral areas in Denmark. May (2017) suggests that the feeling of nostalgia can generate a time transcendent belonging connecting present sense of belonging with the past. However, in May’s study place-based nostalgia are ‘tinged with sadness’ as the places have changed so much that they have ceased to exist with the meaning previously imbued in them (2017:409). Following that logic, it could be possible to live in the same place all one’s life and still feel nostalgic about it as alterations and transformations might eradicate the place qualities that are at the center of individual belonging. To understand how seemingly placeless places (Relph 1976) can be imbued with meaning, Yi-Fu Tuan’s distinction between ‘public symbols’ and ‘fields of care’ are applied (1996). Following this logic, it is the time spent and the life lived in a place that determine the degree of emotional belonging and what seems like a meaningless location to one can to another be a ‘field of care’ so important that it sticks with them all life. However, as Pickering and Keightley (2006) point out, not all lived experiences and place-based nostalgias carry the same opportunities for legitimation in the wider society and this paper will explore how the lack of symbolic legitimation and the transformations of meaning of Place in peripheral Denmark is counteracted and legitimated through different emotional entanglements and biographical investments.