Welcome to Vaasa, the pearl of the Finnish West coast. This is the place, where the city was founded in 1606. The church was built way back in the 14th century, and it was expanded in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
In 1852 the city burned down. The fire spared only two buildings, the courthouse and one apartment building, which had been the first stone built house in the city. The ruins of the church, clocktower, city hall and a school remain on a small hill. It’s a very popular sledhill in wintertime.
The city was rebuilt on a cape around seven kilometres from here, and that is the Vaasa we know nowadays. When towns and municipalities were formed in the 19th century, the ruins belonged to the neighbouring municipality of Korsholm, but the area was ceded to Vaasa in the 1950’s.
As a result of the change in borders, the railway station of Korsholm was located in Vaasa, right behind the ruins. This is a view from the station park.
Traffic here ended probably in the 1980’s. The station stood next to the tracks until 2001 when a group of 12-year-old boys started playing with fire. The station burned down killing one of the boys, and the ruins were demolished a bit later. It was a rather beautiful station, as you can see here.
When I visited the place, there were still some buildings left. All doors were tightly shut, most roofs had crumbled in. The city has been trying to restore what is left to restore for years.
For now they serve as a pretty sorry welcome to a beautiful bilingual city.
The place featured in this week’s post is rather unusual, as it’s not really abandoned. We are talking about the village of Otanmäki, which is located in the former municipality of Vuolijoki, a part of Kajaani since 2007.
The village was founded in the early 50’s, when iron ore was found nearby. A mine was built to utilize it, and a small settlement was built 12 kilometres from Vuolijoki church and 37 kilometres from the town of Kajaani.
The old mining tower is close to the only structure of the mine still standing. It operated between 1953 and 1985.
In addition to the mine itself, an enrichment plant and a vanadium factory were built next to the mine. I believe they were located around here.
When the mine closed, the enrichment plant and vanadium factory were demolished. It seems we found the foundations.
A water tank also remains on the hill behind the tower. After the mine closed, a plant manufactoring railroad cars and trams was founded nearby. However it did little to save the village from emptying.
The village bar was called “The Miner”. I’m sorry for the beautiful filter. I took this one for my Instagram, and the original has vanished.
The Miner was closed when we visited. Permanently, I think.
There are several seven-storey blocks of flats here. Whenever they list the cheapest apartments in Finland, these are usually featured.
The houses are named. The green one is called “Titanium”
And the brownish one “Rise”
He was one of the very few inhabitants we met.
“Rise” looks pretty much like “Titanium”. I find the buildings extremely beautiful. When writing this I checked the apartments for sale here. A three bedroom apartment with 91,5 square meters costs 15 000 euros. The whole seventh floor of the other staircase featuring one two bedroom and one three bedroom apartment, a combined total of 140 square meters is available for less than 23 000 euros.
The people are old, there are no kids here. The high school closed in 2008, and the pitch looks like no football has been played here for ages.
When leaving we encountered a very sad sight, a dying bird. Somewhat symbolic, don’t you think?
After the disappointing trip to the Lohipato school, I needed new challenges with abandoned buildings. When I called the construction company to arrange the return of the keys they had given me, I already had an idea. I asked them, If I could borrow them again in a few weeks.
“If you want to go again, just keep them and return them when you are ready”, they said.
I was pretty novice as a photographer, but eager to learn. I had previously tested my skills by shooting my friends’ dance shows. While roaming through the mainly empty school, I suddenly got an idea. What if I combined these two interests of mine and photographed a dancer in the empty school?
I called my friend with the idea. I asked her to wear a simple white dress. She would become the dancing ghost of the school.
This was just an appetizer. See the rest of the photos in the gallery.
The last part of my exploration begins on the second floor of the final, unexplored wing.
This was something I hadn’t found in any other part of the building: a room with inner glass walls.
Let’s have a closer look behind the sofa. The sign says: “Emergency exit. The route must remain unblocked”. Someone didn’t believe in signs here.
I really wonder what they needed the showers for in here, as this was far away from the sauna, pool and gym.
As you can see, autumn is slowly creeping in making the leaves red and yellow.
So which one is lost? The washing machine, the bicycle or the plastic flower?
A final look at the classrooms here. I had spent around two hours in the school and was suffering of the same mild symptoms as in the previous school. I started having headache, a sore throat and an acid taste in my mouth. The air quality was very bad.
I then did something I usually avoid doing.
I entered the basement.
Here’s the main reason for the school’s abandonment. A pipe had burst and flooded the basement. Water was apparently as high as the mark on the wall, and everything down here was now damaged by moisture.
Most of the basement was solely about random wide corridors and pipes.
There were still some leaks in the pipes. Or then they were new leaks. This one seems a bit smaller than the one which damaged the school.
I only found two rooms in the basement. The first one was this storage room with a flat tire.
The second one was this cave, where a neverending halloween was being celebrated.
A part of the horror showcase were election commercials of the True Finns.
The room had once been a cozy cave, obviously in use by the pupils.
Umm, what exactly tid they teach here?
A detail of the water damage.
I had now explored every single square metre of the school apart from the gym, where the boxers were still training.
So, time to leave. I still was a bit disappointed, though, as this place was rather boring for an abandoned house. But a new idea was already forming in my mind.
I would return.
Meanwhile all the photos from this location can be viewed in the gallery.
Like I said earlier, this wasn’t one of the most interesting buildings to photograph. There was just lots and lots of empty space. But every now and then something came up.
The room was otherwise completely empty. And then in one corner there was a huge pile of party magazines for the True Finns, back then a right wing populist party, who now is openly more and more racist and flirting with facism. Not a thing you’d expect to find in a school.
When I was a kid we had a similar microwave owen at home. Oh the nostalgy.
Something happened with the wall on the right.
In this part of the school the chaos was more evident. Here they had actually done quite a lot to demolish the interior.
There were even nice balconies, both on the ground floor and the first floor.
This had nothing to do with the True Finns. One room of the school was occupied by this massive pile of free car newspapers, which had never been delivered.
Everything else was gone. Apart from first aid instructions and what to do in case of an emergency.
The cans of paint and the hoover confused me. Were they trying to demolish this place or renovate it?
The destruction actually looked like one of my projects. I always start something with a bang, then get bored and leave it as it is.
Such a nice office they have here.
One classroom contained information about aerial mapping and a calendar made by a local mobile retailer. The Nokia logo described earlier may have had something to do with this business, but all the traces of this connection had vanished.
Another classroom with a nice panoramic window. This one would have made a cozy one room apartment, wouldn’t it?
Another empty classroom, another messed up blackboard.
Empty rooms.
The floors and walls were a little different in every room.
The first signs of vandalism could be seen here. Who made these, is unknown to me, as there were no broken windows or doors.
The attic promised a lot, yet it was just full of useless random junk.
Time to start our descent towards the final post from this adventure.
Next I arrived in the main lobby. I took these pictures in September, but somehow they had already braced for the coming winter.
In Finland we always joke about old people trying to use kicksleds in as little snow as possible. Wonder, where grandpa’s tried to go this time. Let’s have a look at the piece of art in the back of the dining room next.
This one was rather minimalistic, but I rather liked it. I believe, it has been made espacially for this school, as the name of the place was Salmon dam’s school and there’s clearly a salmon and a dam.
All the appliances in the kitchen had been removed and recycled.
The school also seemed to have undergone an extensive renovation some time during the 1990’s. The floor on the left is the original 60’s tiling.
The podium and the red carpet are here. Just where are the winners?
I think the old wooden elevator doors were much more beautiful than modern, metallic ones. And what on earth is that thing on the wall?
This room was dedicated to old movie posters.
I really don’t know if the posters belonged to the school or were a later addition. These rooms had been used by an ad agency after the school moved away.
I guess this is where cooking classes were held.
The layout of the school was strange. I usually expolre abandoned houses methodically, floor by floor, but here it wasn’t possible. I had to go up and down, and up again to actually see everything.
It looked almost as if they had started taking the place down although the construction company had told me, it wasn’t happening yet.
This place claimed to be the office. Also since when have Persian rugs been a part of a school interior?
The collection of TV sets of different ages really was astonishing in this school.
As you can see from the picture, the power is on. This is the only abandoned house I’ve ever been to, which wasn’t completely abandoned. Boxers were training here even while I photographed.
And yes, I did promise some surprises. Well, let’s see what we find if we follow that arrow.
All right, it seems like a normal locker room with the showers behind the next door.
But this, this really makes me feel envious. Of course I’d have liked to have a sauna after gym lessons, too. This is not standard equipment in Finnish schools.
And this is most definitely not standard equipment in Finnish schools. But I can see why this is here. As you can see, it’s accessible with a wheelchair. And as the pupils had special needs, going to the municipal swimming pool would perhaps have been less safe.
What this was doing in the pool made a little less sense.
The pool room was one of the nicest spaces in the building. The red bricks and light wood used in so many public places in the 60’s really give a nice, calm atmosphere.
Another messy room. The red chair in the picture really doesn’t look like it feels at home here.
The green drawer looked impressive, but was unfortunately empty.
The doors and the counters are a little more spacious than in ordinary schools.
Another room raising more questions than giving answers. What is the point of those wallpaper slices? And who has bitten off one corner of the table?
A very random collection of useless paper and sporting equipment.
The rooms in this wing were rather small and mostly empty. They contained just one or two odd items each. This is, where the Christmas tree has ended up, in case you’re looking for it.
Yet another classroom with innovative wallpaper designs. And a mini Christmas tree.
Like I said, this wasn’t one of the most interesting buildings I had seen. Just empty rooms one after another.
The signs on the floor say “waxed”. The brownish thing on the walls and on the floor hints at there being something worse wrong with the pipes than originally told.
Because of my work I got involved with a building project. It was about demolishing an old school and some adjacent tree houses and replacing them with modern high rise blocks of flats with a nice view over a river.
The school was from the 1960’s, a very unspectacular building with a red brick facade. It was called Lohipadon koulu (School of the Salmon Dam) and it had been a school for children with special needs. A waterpipe had burst in the basement, and the school was no longer fit for use.
I didn’t even photograph the school’s exterior. Thanks to Wikimedia Commons, we know what the place looked like.
A new school building had already been built across town, and the kids had moved out. Planning for the new houses wasn’t quite ready yet, so the construction company owning the school had rented out parts of it to different companies and organizations. They had all been evicted except for a boxing club which still used the gymnasium as their training premises.
The construction company gave me a tour on the premises related to my job. When it was over, I told that I photographed abandoned buildings as a hobby, and asked if I could come again later.
“Oh, sure. Just keep the keys, we don’t really need them. Come anytime you like and spend as much time as you like.”
I was so amazed, that I didn’t even manage to catch an exterior shot of the building.
I entered the school through the first door I saw and this was what I found. I thought this looked promising.
The first few rooms were extremely messy, broken up and contained all kinds of stuff. I thought it was a good sign, but it pretty soon turned out, this school was very much different.
I next stumbled in a small room left untouched since the school moved away. This had probably belonged to a teacher. Either someone teaching a very specific subject or someone doing student councelling.
Right next to the entrance I used was a strange room. It looked either like a storage or the school’s woodworking class, but there was no trace of any machinery left. Even the door frames had been taken away, which resulted in probably the most dangerous emergency exit I had ever seen in an abandoned building.
If the previous school was full of surprises, this one really didn’t disappoint either. Could someone please explain, what a Nokia sign is doing in a former school?
This room definitely had something to do with woodworking. Such a modern tv here.
Oh dear. Their coffee must have gotten quite cold by this time.
So school was out, and they left in a hurry. The machinery has been taken away, the rest has been left behind.
I may not be a specialist in designing buildings, but I think this one was particularly badly designed. It was really a maze and full of dark corridors like this. The walls are pastel coloured as is the floor, but I don’t think they’re original.
Like always someone had gotten the urge to write on the blackboards.
Here you can perhaps catch a glimpse on what the exterior was like. A part of the school had just one floor, some wings had two storeys.
All in all I think this was a rather boring school. It offered very little to photograph but did contain some big surprises, the first of which was the Nokia sign. And I’ll get to the second one right at the start of the next post.
The summer was over, leaves fell and darkness poured to Finland. I returned to my studies and the days were now so short, that you really couldn’t consider any photography realated adventures at all. Not that I had anything to photograph. My friends hadn’t tipped me about any new abandoned placess, and the ones I found myself were inaccessible.
For one reason or another as a part of my strange adventures I ended up becoming a group leader for a theatre party’s tour to Eastern Finland, an area, which I rarely visited. All in all the visit was close to a catastrophe: there was drama among the group members, who barely spoke with each other by the time the show was about to start. Two performers fell ill, nobody had signed the bills for the accomondation and meals, and nobody in the party was authorized to do that. Oh, and we also had to guard one of the performers so that the person would not behave too unprofessionally.
Apart from that it was a nice getaway from my hectic everyday life. We stayed at a very beautiful old building, which had been a municipal home for elderly people and was now rented out for tourists. We got there late in the evening, had dinner and while the sauna was getting warm, our host wanted to take us for an evening walk.
“There’s something nearby you might like”, he said, and led us into darkness. We walked some way along the highway before turning to a dark alley surrounded by trees.
At the end of the alley we found this. A long two-storey building, which, our local guide told us, was a former mental asylum. Built in the 50’s it was closed down the previous year, and was looking for new owners.
The blinds were shut and the place was clearly empty. But there was still electricity running, signs were warning about camera surveillance, the doors and windows were intact and it was too dark to explore an abandoned building. Besides it was late and we had a performance the following day.
These photos and a third one with our group at the main door were the only ones I took this time. But a thought crossed my mind: Maybe I should visit Eastern Finland more often.
There was a third staircase in the back of the wing which housed the three gymnasiums. This was far smaller and more difficult to access than the two main staircases, but we used this one to go down to ground floor, as we hadn’t been here yet.
We left the stairs at the first floor gymnasium, where the wall bars were again partly dismantled. On the table was a strange device and a note telling, that they are measuring the amount of radon gas in the air.
Next to the gymnasium was a small room with yet more sports equipment.
Down in the basement we found toilets. Someone has practiced german on the toilet stall wall. That one almost says “Shit, my tank is broken”. Almost.
The basement housed the schools woodworking class. It was rather empty.
There were still some glue and paint left from the last lesson.
There was cleaning equipment in the closet, but the pupils really didn’t bother to clean up after painting their assignments.
Instead they painted the walls here, too.
There was a small and worn out back door at the end of the small staircase we used to descend the building.
Below the gymnasiums was a small apartment, which had probably originally been the caretaker’s. It was common to build a caretakers aparment to schools back then, as it was very common for the caretaker to live in the school building. My primary school caretaker still lived at our school in the late 90’s before he retired. His successor didn’t move in and the apartment got a new use.
Nobody has lived here in ages, either. It looks rather like an office – perhaps that of the school curator or nurse. Some items also hint that this one has been in student union use.
The apartment really wasn’t that big. But they weren’t in the 1930’s.
The kitchen is no longer there. This is what the hints of the student union times are: games and a Coca Cola lamp.
The apartment had a kitchen / living room and one very small bedroom. A box from the woodworking class with paint and stuff has ended up here.
The apartment had a second entrance with a place for coats and a closet with food. Could someone explain what this thing with pickled cucumber is, as this is only the third house I have thoroughly explored and the second one to feature cans of this stuff?
The ground floor lobby was smaller and darker than the others. Maybe because the entrance took space from the big glass windows that the other floors had.
One more room in the basement. This one was most definitely used by the student union, as there were couches and games. Those old wooden tv sets were still common in schools in the early 2000’s. And classes didn’t have their own tv sets. When the time came to watch a movie about once in a semester, the teacher got a tv and rolled it to the classroom in a large cupboard with wheels. When that happened, we always knew something special was to come.
One final climb up the stairs…
…and we were back where we started from on the ground floor. All in all the visit took several hours and by the end of it it was quite difficult to breathe.
So what happened with this building? The part on the left housing the gymnasiums along with the middle part housing the lobbies and the two first columns of windows on the right housing the main staircase and some small classrooms, were preserved and renovated. The awful Minerit coating was removed and the school was plastered and painted white like it originally was.
The gymnasiums are still in use as sports facilities, and an annex which houses the municipal swimming pool was built to the old building. It starts right at the wall and covers the area where this photo was taken.
The rest of the building on the right side of the picture was demolished about a year after our visit and replaced with a block of flats, which doesn’t fit there at all. And so the story of the once so graceful landmark of the city came to a partial end.
You can view all the photos from my visit to the school in the gallery.
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