I have a friend I’ve known since my student years. We met through student politics, were never close, but shared a fandom towards old Volvos. We gradually started talking on Instagram and he started following my roadtrips.
He told me, that his girlfriend originally came from a small rural village, and he could ask his in laws, if they knew anything abandoned there. And indeed they did. The very school, where my friend’s girlfriends grandmother had studied in 1959. It was owned by a relative and I got a permission to visit.
The school was so small and was closed so long ago, that I really had to dig up all possible archives to find anything about it. Turned out, that many small schools were opened in the area, and after the amount of pupils decreased, the schools were closed and pupils transferred to the new school in a bigger village nearby. The school in question was open between 1934 and 1963.
First of all we had to find it. The main road in the village had once passed through the school area, but it had been rerouted decades ago. What remained of it had not been visible on aerial photos since 2020. The other building on the lot had partially collapsed already way back in 2010.
But my friend’s father in law found the remains of the road and into the jungle we went. Everything possible scratched, bit and stung us, but I was determined to succeed.
This, I determined later, was the old school building because of its entrance. It was located in the middle of a forest and in a very bad condition.
A foldable bed, once very common in Finnish homes.
The cupboard was falling apart.
Finally in the hall. It looks as if this has been a home or possibly a summer residence after school use ended.
Extremely old lemonade bottles. I didn’t even know that Asterix lemonade existed. When I was young and got to go clubbing, Asterix was a drink we ordered.
Newer beer bottles. Those could be as new as the 1980’s or 1990’s.
This room has served as the kitchen. It is now almost completely collapsed.
A horizontal view. The electic meter seems strangely new.
An old stove, what seems like a portable sink and an old sewing machine. Quite a collection again.
Notice, how the roof is crumbling down from about every side.
It won’t be long until the entire building has collapsed.
There was access to another room, but no further. The door to the following section had been closed.
Lihapolar only existed between the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, so my guess is that the building has been abandoned around then.
That’s an interesting work of art.
Obviously a bedroom.
Again I attempted something. Again I failed.
Let’s have a look at things in a better light. The roof has collapsed even here.
What the hell happened here.
Another view of the strange installation.
In addition to the baby, a poor doggo has been abandoned here.
Nothing more left to see in this section.
And there were no other sections. This is the other end of the school. Everything else is gone.
I tried to see if I could access the rest of the building.
But there really was nothing more to access. That there to the left is the porch, and the thing to the right are the two other rooms. The blocked door is directly on that wall.
Let’s next turn our attention towards the other building.