I was again contacted by a friend. She told me, that there’s an abandoned hardware store in her small home village, in case I was interested. Of course I was interested.
The village was so small, that it was a bit difficult to believe, that a hardware store had thrived there. Yet there it was.
The windows had recently been boarded shut, which was a disappointment.
Now this isn’t just any company. Eino Aho founded a general store in his home village back in 1917. He died in the 1920’s, but his brother Akseli Aho continued the business. He started founding several general stores in the region and entered the car dealership business in the 1950’s and even became a wholesale company.
Apparently they had hardware stores too.
The wholesale business ended in 1992, but I’m not sure about this business. The last functioning arm was the car business, which remained in family until 2024, when it was sold to a competitor.
Unfortunately it was closed. This would have been an interesting location.
An old stove. This indicates, that the teacher’s apartment has indeed been here upstairs.
The upstairs lobby. I first found the handrail in the middle of it rather strange, until I realized, that the side stairway had a similar one. The main stairway of the school had been located here, but closed at some point.
The same room I was in already previously.
Again it looks like renovations.
A fairly modern looking kitchen in an otherwise ruined room.
A vintage bottle of lemonade. The tag says that it’s been manufactured in Vaasa. Hartwall closed its factory there in 1987.
Even the floor is different on the site of the former stairway.
It looks almost as if somebody has tried to build a dropped ceiling to the house.
Even the radiators look shiny and new in this section.
I don’t think there’s any doubt anymore. This is another failed renovation project.
This time I’m treating you with a selfie.
Heading back downstairs.
And heading out.
Another attempt at an external photo. But I couldn’t do better than this.
The previous winter I was travelling to the North for a business trip with a photographer and drummer Vesa Ranta, when we spotted a large abandoned building next to the road. It looked like an old school.
It was in the middle of the winter and we had a schedule so we didn’t stop. But as I now was on a summer holiday and the weather was a bit better for an exploration, despite light rain, I came looking for it.
The only problem was, that I was unable to locate it. After a bit of searching on maps I managed to find it. And soon could see, why it was so difficult to notice during this time of the year.
It had sat abandoned for so long, that a forest had grown around it.
It was next to impossible to get a good external photo of it.
So let’s stop wasting time and go inside instead. The appearance of the place was pretty rough.
The school had been closed way back in the 1970’s. At least that is when it stops being marked as a school on maps.
After that the building was enlarged with a lower wing. Apparently it has served as some kind of a workshop judging by the texts on the wall, which are phone numbers to a car workshop and hardware store. The numbers start with a 9, meaning that they were written on the wall before 1996, when all numbers started beginning with a 0.
There was a lot of old stuff stored in one corner of the space, which looked like a garage.
The front of the extension.
The downstairs of the school were quickly explored.
Let’s go up. The decay was evident here, and the building has most likely been abandoned for decades. The front yard looks pretty overgrown in aerial photos from 2016.
The top of the stairs. The door features a lock meaning, that this was probably where the teachers lived.
The forest was surrounding the house.
A bathroom. The radiators have been removed.
It once again looks a bit like somebody has started renovations and given up.
The roof seems a bit leaky.
The damage to the walls looks a bit like something has been attached to them before.
Well, well, well, isn’t that the cursed school? The old and creepy place, which I first visited in 2017 and finally finished the exploration in 2022. There was an old barrack on the yard, which I explored back in 2021.
So why am I back? Haven’t I seen it all already?
Well, no. There’s still this 1930’s teacher apartment building, which I haven’t managed to enter despite many attempts. And couldn’t this time either.
The school buildings were demolished in late 2024. This one was left standing. And I will try to get inside for as long as it stands until I succeed.
Another familiar location. The railway station, which shut its doors back in 2006 and is threatened to be run over by a motorway. Photos from 2021 can be found here.
I’ve come to see, if anything has changed. Probably the condition of the place has gotten worse, but I have no high hopes getting in.
That masterpiece was there way back in 2021. I’ve removed the station’s name to protect it.
As I’ve done here. Who in the world wants to break windows as beautiful as those?
The back of the station. I wasn’t the least bit more lucky here.
This isn’t the original place of that sign. People have been using it as a target for shooting practise.
The far end of the station. As I expected, no luck getting in.
As a bonus, a photo of Alice the Malice on the driveway. She still looks great, considering, that I’ve now run well past 30 000 kilometers with her without doing any major maintainance. The odometer now stands at more than 450 000.
But unfortunately she is starting to show her age. The clutch has started making noise and shaking, the drivetrain makes even more noise. But I’ll go on for as long as she runs!
The other building was in a much better shape. I suspect, that it has been a teacher apartment building, why else would a house with two apartments have been built here.
These two photos have been taken from the main road once running through the area. It has become a rose garden.
The other end of the building was inaccessible because of all the thorns. Luckily there was an entrance in this end.
This side was in a much better shape than the old school building. As they now sit on separate properties, it might just be that they haven’t been abandoned at the same time.
But it also seems, that even this place has become a storage later on.
The owner hasn’t exactly been afraid to use colors in decorating.
Definitely a storage. But also a plastic carpet has been installed. I believe renovations have been made as late as the 1970’s.
The ceiling above the oven indicates, that collapse has started even here.
This is something i didn’t expect to find. A letter stating, that somebody had tried to read the electric meter, but couldn’t get in. It is dated to 2006!
The awful state of the ceiling is better apparent from this point of view.
They emptied the fridge when they last left.
A magazine for members of the nurse union from 1997. My former colleague now is editor in chief there.
A random collection of lemonade, juice and beer bottles.
Rooftop access.
The other room was accessible from the hall. Electric heating has been used in additon to the oven. And the use of colors is again very rich.
They even cleaned before they left, it seems.
The electric meter was still on. The warning says that the main switch doesn’t interrupt the power from the meter.
Well, the main switch is off, but a light is on in the meter. It seems, like this house is still powered after all these years.
Quite the place! After we returned, food was ready. A traditional macaroni casserole and even homemade cake for dessert. As customary to rural Finland a guest, whether familiar or unknown, never leaves hungry.
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.
In several posts from the summer of 2022 and even from before that, I’ve mentioned the concept municipal home. It comes from the history. Even before the Finnish welfare state, there were houses, where in general everybody, who couldn’t live on their own or with relatives were placed: the elderly, the disabled and the mentally ill.
In 1920 it became mandatory for every municipality to have a municipal home. That was also, when the conditions improved drastically. If it had been common until this for all the patients to live in large rooms regardless of their condition, the municipal homes now started building own wards for the sick and mentally ill.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, when the welfare state was rapidly built, the municipal homes started losing many of their functions. The central hospital network was built, the chronically mentally ill and the mentally handicapped were moved to a network of mental asylums. The latter got their own institutions in their 1960’s. What was left were the elderly, so gradually most of the municipal homes became nursing homes such as the one featured in the last 10 posts. There are exceptions such as this one, which became a facility for alcoholics and this one, which was enlarged to become a mental asylum, but in general it was nursing for old people. Every municipality had their own population of them and they needed a place to stay in near their homes for their last years.
But the nursing home I just featured did both. The old main building of the municipal home was demolished to make way for a new wing for the elderly. The newer building became a part of that complex. But there was a third building on the lot of the municipal home from the same era as the 1950’s building. I’m not sure what happened in between, but in the early 2020’s it was a small closed psychiatric ward for teenagers.
Plans to close it and concentrate all psychiatry in the region to the central hospital in regional capital existed for years. They finally came true in 2021 or 2022 when the patients moved to the big city.
This probably is one of the wards built in the 1950’s.
Any other activities than playing darts?
The back. Although clearly from the same era, the architecture of this building is different and more detailed.
Covid cancelled all visits. After restrictions were lifted, no patients were left.
Although the unit moved in 2021 or 2022, it was permanently closed a few years later.
There was a lounge in the garden.
The main entrance was quite exaggerative. I don’t think the design is original.
Two more doors behind, but no entries.
The building stands on its own lot and wasn’t for sale with the municipal home. I’m not sure who owns it, but I believe, that it won’t be demolished with the old nursing home. At least I hope so. You can’t demolish things until I’ve gained entry.
The dressing room was large, but featured lots of lockers.
It was important to wash hands, it seems.
What is a baby doll doing in the sink of a nursing home?
“It’s nice to be a pig”. Well, we all have opinions.
A toilet.
I believe that this has been the common kitchen of the so called apartments.
And later it has probably been a break room for some shift workers.
The kitchen cupboards look like they are originals from the 1950’s.
A vintage TV and a violet cloak. This stuff gets even weirder.
More vintage TV’:’s.
I thought it was dangerous to place objects on stoves.
The other stairway of the building.
Another room with a badly beaten Christmas tree.
Attic access.
There probably was nothing interesting there, because I am going back down. This is the main stairway facing the courtyard.
The end of the corridor.
And finally outside.
The back of the building. The complex has been for sale for years, but nothing has come out of it. It has also been on the list of buildings to be demolished by the municipality, but nothing has come out of that either. It was first listed to be demolished in 2024-25, but the current date is 2028.
I am not holding my breath for something to happen any time soon..
Cookie Consent
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By using our site, you consent to cookies.
Websites store cookies to enhance functionality and personalise your experience. You can manage your preferences, but blocking some cookies may impact site performance and services.
Essential cookies enable basic functions and are necessary for the proper function of the website.
Name
Description
Duration
Cookie Preferences
This cookie is used to store the user's cookie consent preferences.
