My tour had by now advanced to a stage, where I was driving through the most scarcely populated areas of Finland, which had suffered the most of the effects of urbanization. An endless supply of abandoned buildings? Yes. An endless supply of walk-in locations? No.
What you have to know about the Northern part of Finland is, that there is a very strong community bond over there. People look after their neighbours. And also people don’t break the property of their neighbours.
So, yes. The North is full of houses, where nobody lives anymore. But everybody in the villages knows, who visits which yard despite the houses sometimes being very far away from each other.
And because everybody knows each other, the local youngsters, which are fewer and fewer by the day, don’t do break ins at properties owned by their neighbours, which often are relatives.
So the area is full of places like this one. A one family house, which is clearly not inhabited. But also not broken into.
And such as this one. Again clearly abandoned, again out of bounds for me.
Because I do not do break ins. And while I do understand, why several urbexers are looking for time capsules, where nobody has been before them, I do not. I always feel like an intruder on those explorations, such as this one.
For some reason I enjoy places, which have been broken and destroyed by vandals. I find photographs of decay and destruction more interesting than untouched places.
Call me odd, I’ll just continue doing what I like. And having built the biggest urbex website in Finland in terms of content, I still think I’m doing it right.