Deserted Finland

From Many To One

After a long break I returner back to the city where I lived for 10 years. My real reason was dance practise, but as I stayed with a couple of friends, with whom I had explored before, we used our day off to go and try to find new locations.

The first one was – or were – a row house built for the doctors of a mental asylum in the 1950’s.

But when I published a photo of the location in my private Instagram story, I was contacted by a friend. She had lived in the house in her childhood, but back then it wasn’t a row house with four different apartments. it was four separate houses.

I believe, that the building had been used for some functions of the hospital after apartment use ended. It looks like it has been abandoned for some time.

There are new plans for the lot, which probably means, that this building will be demolished to make way for something more efficient.

The lights have probably been out for years.

The vandals have found the place, but there wasn’t much damage. An active hospital building is less than 100 meters away.

If I didnt’ know that the houses had been separate, I wouldn’t notice it. There’s also an abandoned Fiat on the yard.

Each one of the apartments had a small back yard.

The yards were separated with fences. We couldn’t really go further than the first one because of the jungle of burning nettles.

Although the walls had been plastered and painted yellow, some details in plain brick were still visible.

This set of stairs has been added later. It’s probably been built as an emergency exit, when the use of the building shifted from apartments to hospital.

In this end of the building the back yard was better kept.

Although the lower wings are a later addition, they look original. I couldn’t determine when they had been built.

The ivy makes the entrance a lot cozier.

But maybe the gardener should pay the place a visit.

No entry here this time.

The World’s Slowest Demolition Operation

Time to go and have a look at another familiar location.

This here is the former community college, I’ve visited many times before. Demolition started way back in 2020. It was now July 2023, and they still hadn’t managed to tear the three buildings down.

In fact compared with these photos from the spring of 2023, nothing seemed to have happened. If the owner didn’t have serious issues in carrying out the demolition, I didn’t know what the case was.

In fact later that autumn the authorities placed a penalty payment of 50 000 euros on the owner. That would have to be paid unless the building and all the waste were gone by June 2024.

I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

Stuck Where Last Seen

Moving on deeper North, I next landed to a small town, where a lot of my friends are from. They had gathered there to do a dance performance for local celebrations, I was hired to take the promotional photos of their group and photograph their gig.

Well, we did a promotional photo shoot, and the photos turned out just great. The photos of the gig are still in the editing process almost three years later.

But this happened also to be the same place where I had sold my first summer car to some random local guy when it broke up. I had already visited it back in 2022 trying to find my old winter coat. Back then it was already a sorry sight.

Well, the sight hadn’t exactly changed. There it stood. And would probably stand for the years to come.

The Rumors Turned Out To Be True

Another familiar location. This time it’s a building, which I visited back in 2022 after hearing of it from my Tinder match. She told me, that it was a mental asylum, but in my previous post I figured, that it was a municipal home with a ward for the mentally ill.

Turns out we both were right. This was the last remaining building of a municipal home area. And it originally was built as the psychiatric ward of the complex.

As a lover of 1950’s architecture, this was a place I really wanted to visit.

Unfortunately there were still those camera or motion detector looking things on every corner.

Sadly there were still no open doors, and as I never break anything, there was nothing for me.

Another dead end. Once again, I will be back.

A Neverending Village Part III

I hadn’t even reached the center of the village, when I spotted another potential entry.

Compared to the two previous cottages, this one looked like it could fulfill modern standards of living.

The place was old. But it indeed was much more better preserved and comfortable.

The kitchen. The baby crib puzzles me a bit.

Judging by the stuff even this place looks like it might have spent its last years in summer use.

A juice carton, which expired in 2020. I don’t think this has been left by the inhabitants. Teenagers love to drink these things when they hang around.

A lot of drinking water has been needed here.

The living room with one of the most interesting beds I’ve seen: a double bed downstairs, a single bed upstairs.

The ceiling shows, that the place has been abandoned for a long time.

I wonder, what they tried here.

A lot of pizza has been consumed here.

Back in the kitchen.

and heading upstairs now that there was one.

There was a small lobby there.

And just one large empty room.

The vertical view of things.

Lace.

And the scenery.

There were of course dozens of abandoned looking houses in the village, but they were still in such a good condition, that they might have been in seasonal use.

And I was busy trying to get my next big catch.

A Neverending Village Part II

I didn’t have to travel far from the previous location before finding the next one. This one was perhaps a bit newer and in better condition than the previous one, not that it was very spectacular, either.

The porch. Plain wood was also very much present here.

The other side of the porch featured a large cupboard.

No dogs allowed, according to the health board. What the hell is this?

A very old box and magazines from the early 1990’s. The one on top is from December 1991, and the cover story is of singer Hanna Ekola in need of tenderness. Hanna Ekola is of course a one hit wonder best known for her song Villihevosia.

A scythe on the wall. They have worked the traditional way here.

A bottle of the famous beer brand Lahden Sininen, which was discontinued in 1997 and revived later. The fun fact is, that this bottle has been bottled in a brewery in Oulu, which was owned by Mallasjuoma between 1967 until brewing beer ended in 1979. The bottle must then be from between 1967 and 1979.

This was another two room cottage. Very primitive, but much better preserved than the previous one. This one is the larger room.

There were a couple of beds here. I have a vague guess, that the place has acted as a summerplace after the original inhabitants moved out.

The baking oven, a traditional thing in old Finnish homes.

A stove and a small heater. The floor has started to collapse.

A bad photo. But there were some cassettes on the floor.

One of them is by Erkki Junkkarinen, who is famous for his whistling.

Two types of chairs.

The smaller room featured two more beds and a small fireplace.

Looks like a very old film case.

A lovely pattern on the window cover.

A box of random paper.

And somebody’s essay book. The name was so common, I couldn’t find anything useful with it.

And the lurking Volvo. This is basically what the village was like. A long straight road with loads of old, small houses in a very bad condition on both sides of it.

A Neverending Village Part I

A friend of mine told me about one of the strangest villages in Finland. It was an extremely long one located by the sides of an almost straight road and continued for dozens of kilometers. The center of the village was 30-40 kilometers from the nearest towns.

It had been a rural village and like with all rural villages, people had started leaving. There was a lot to explore, my friend said.

And quite well enough I didn’t even get to the village, before I spotted the first location.

Looks like a very old farm house, which has been abandoned for ages. The roof looks surprisingly fresh, though.

After trekking through the jungle between the road and the porch I was greeted to this.

It was a two room cottage, which was very badly destroyed from the inside. By vandals or failed renovations, I don’t know.

Plain wood, torn wallpaper, bricks and debris was really all there was to see.

Some windows had been blocked even when the building was still in use.

This one was the larger room of the house.

The fireplaces were completely destroyed.

This is the other room. It was pretty much the same. As the floor was badly destroyed, I didn’t explore further.

Not the most interesting of places. But they all count!

Still Didn’t Feel Like Posing

Yet another familiar location. This is the small village store in the middle of nowhere featured earlier in 2022. As there is something looking like a camera next to the open door in the right corner of the building facing the road, I decided to approach from the back.

I tried and tried to find a weak spot in the vegetation, but there was also a deep trench somwhere underneath. And I was only wearing my short shorts.

And why was I only wearing short shorts? Well, my friend had told me that their friend owned the place and that they would like to see the expression of the owner, if I was caught on camera with my shorts.

The camera looking thing was still there on top of the grey box on the side wall. And I didn’t feel like posing. So I just left.

Missed It Again

Having again read the news, I heard of a new elementary school built in a village, which former was a center of a small municipality. The building of the new school in such small places almost always means the demolition of the old school. And again I felt sorry about the beautiful old 1950’s school building.

The demolition was set to begin that summer. I figured out I could still make it before the bulldozer if I hurried. It was fifty-sixty. Especially because the work was delayed, as nests of the common swift were found in the attic, when the work started.

As you can see, it was too late.

Technically I could have still entered, as the demolition site was very poorly secured and the demolition workers were just leaving for the day. But as the demolition had already advanced this far and the building was that old, I figured out, that the asbestos removal work had already been done. That meant, that there was nothing to see inside.

A fairly strange way to operate carving small holes in different parts of the building. I guess they knew, what they were doing, though.

This side of the school was still intact. The new school can be seen behind it.

The style of the two wings is so different, you dould almost think that the school has been built in different phases. I couldn’t confirm this with the help of old maps or photos.