Still remember 2020 and the summer when everything was locked down? Well I sure as hell do. In fact I'm remembering it almost every day, as I've finally managed to sort out my archives all the way from 2006 up to this point, edit the photos and publish them.

I had moved to a new city just six months prior to the pandemic reaching our remote Northern corner of the world. I had absolutely nothing to do, was bored and was in a pretty rotten mental state having been forced to stay in one town for more than three weeks in a row (I don't do that too often). When you have too much time you get great (or stupid) ideas and I really got one crazy one.

I decided to buy a summer car. And for 700 euros I got this beauty.



Built in 1996 she had ran 322 000 kilometers before the odometer stopped. It was just like the car I got for my 18th birthday, which was exactly why I bought her in the first place.

For more good reasons why I wanted this very car, read here:

https://desertedfi...-all-these-things/

When I bought her, I was only planning on visiting a few national parks and a couple of urbex locations, which had always been to far away for me to visit. But then things got a bit out of hand and I got an even crazier idea. I would try to visit all current and former municipalities in Finland during one summer. There are around 570 of them and in my most optimistic estimates it would require around 20 000 kilometers of driving.

More on the project: https://desertedfi...r-de-finland-2020/

But that is a different story and will be told elsewhere, as I'm only now getting to the very point of creating this thread, which is of course urbex.

During the summer I visited more than 120 abandoned places. Most of them were brand new for me, but I also checked the current status of some of my dear locations from earlier. Instead of creating a new thread for every single location, I just decided to create one for them all, which is this one.

I only used my iPhone to photograph back then, and never intended to publish anything. That's why there are very little photos from some locations and some are of horrible quality. But I will try to make this up with a lot of information about the history of these places.

I hope you will find my journey interesting.

Location one:



So what is this? A flying saucer?

Nope. This is all that remains from the legendary Keimola race track today. Closed down in the late 1970's it lay forgotten and abandoned in a forest for around 30 years before making way to a new residential area.

Here's a picture from the very same place back in 2008, which was one of my first explores:



Sorry again for the quality. I was only using my phone back then.

Link to the 2020 post: https://desertedfi...-to-the-beginning/

Link to the 2008 post with two more photos: https://desertedfi...ola-motor-stadium/

The second day of my tour included visiting several places around the capital region. One of them was a wonderful Bauhaus villa from the 1930's, which I had read about in the news years ago.

Basically the story was, that the Iraqi embassy had bought it and used it as their embassy until the 1980's, when a new embassy was built. It was then abandoned and stood empty despite being a preserved building.

When I finally managed to reach the property, I was greeted by this.



Nothing. The villa had been demolished and replaced by a makeshift parking lot.

This is the old article in question. It is in Swedish, but there's a picture of the old villa.

http://gamla.vastr...funkishus-forfalla

Next location: a municipal swimming pool.



Another fairly interesting story behind this one. Designed by famed architect Aarne Ervi and completed in the mid 1960's as one of the first of its kind in Finland, it is a protected building. A massive renovation was carried out in the early 2000's, but around everything went wrong.

After spending another 10 million euros on more renovations, it was closed down while the politicians figured out what to do. Last year they decided to basically rebuild most of it with the cost of 40 million. That's around 10 millions more than demolishing it and replacing it with a brand new, much larger structure.

Find number three: a former petrol station.



Unlike the previous ones, there was actually something to explore here. Not much to see, though. This is the old garage, which has provided oil changes and light service to cars.



And here's the former store.



A few more photos from the area: https://desertedfi...on-grankulla-2020/

Final destination of the day. Former staff residential area of an old rubber factory and a very famous urbex location in Finland back in the days. It has been covered by Urbanex Ninja here: https://urbanex.ni...ehtaan-autiotalot/ And I really looked forward to entering the stone houses.

Except that there were none. This was where they had stood.



Three wooden houses had been renovated beautifully. Yet this one had suffered a sad fate just months later.



It had burned down and was later demolished.

As you can see, not a great first day of exploring. Luckily Finland is a large country.

Next up: a partly collapsed home.



I opted against entering, as there was a real risk of collapse.



Nearly everything on the lot had collapsed. This is the formed dog house.



I only chose to look through the windows of the house.



The living room.



The garage was still in a good shape. The inhabitants had left their Volvo behind.



Even the cow shed had collapsed.



More photos: https://desertedfi...a-tired-home-2020/

Moving on. The next discovery was a bit of an incident. I was heading towards a big building in a small village thinking that it was a school. It wasn't. Instead it was a huge mental asylum.

Well, huge by Finnish standards.



They claimed to be open and were so international, that this was told clearly in English.



The building was a former municipal home, which had become a mental asylum in the 1950's. It had been built in several phases.



I explored until this sticker scared me away.



The last use of the building is reported to have been mental illness rehabilitation organizations. Since when have Hell's Angels been one of those?

More on the location: https://desertedfi...ental-asylum-2020/

Like I said, my urbex summer didn't start of very well, as I wasn't able to gain entry to several places. But luckily things improved.

Another return to a crime scene:



In 2011 here was and old elementary school. They basically cut the building in two, demolished the larger halve and replaced it with that amazingly dull block of flats. They then built the new municipal swimming pool as a new annex to the building.

So basically they saved just the main stairway and the gyms of the old school, which back in 2011 looked like this. The photo has been taken where the swimming pool now is.



Such a shame. It was actually a pretty beautiful building if it hadn't been covered with those awful tiles back in the 1950's.

I've featured the building in an earlier thread here, but in case you want to have another look at a rather large gallery from a closed school, here it is.

https://desertedfi...chool-hamina-2011/

And then on to something completely different:



This is actually a historically significant place. It is a former stone quarry, which supplied granite to the Russian city of St. Petersburg, when Peter the Great started building St. Petersburg. The largest stone here was a 33 meters long monolith, which is now the Alexander column.

The quarry was abandoned in the 1910's. In the past few years they've refurbished the area and created a small path there with large signs telling about the history of the place.

This beauty is an old nursing home.



It was originally built in the 1930's and enlarged in the 1950's and even once in the 1980's.



Here you can clearly see the three different phases. The one from the 1930's on the right, the one from the 1950's in the middle and the newest part on the left.



It is located in a remote location near a small town, which is declining by a lot. Some 10 years ago it was closed and put up for sale.



A few years ago the heating system broke up in the middle of the winter and all pipes froze. The old, metallic radiators were destroyed by the ice and there was massive water damage to the building.



It is now waiting to be demolished. And I'm still waiting to find a way in.

More on this location: https://desertedfi...nursing-home-2020/

After WWII, when Finland was rebuilt, a very distinctive type of building started appearing in suburbs, smaller towns and villages.

They were small, two-storey buildings. Downstairs was room for one or several shops, upstairs were apartments for the shopkeepers, sometimes even an extra room to rent to someone outside family.

It is not very uncommon to see these buildings half empty. The shops downstairs have closed, sometimes even converted into apartments. The apartments upstairs are often still in use.

But then there was the village of Myllykoski. Some 15 years ago a pulp mill and paper factory, which had employed most of the village, was shut down.

While technically not completely abandoned, this is what happened after the closure.

All the photos have been shot on the same street, which is only about 300 meters long:











Oh, and that was just the beginning. More: https://desertedfi...t-myllykoski-2020/

And speaking of pulp mills and paper factories...

The area near the village, where the previous pictures were taken is really famous for its forest industry. Within 20 kilometers of the central town there have been more than 20 machines producing paper in the best days.

But the best days are now gone. There are two pulp mills left and less than 10 machines producing paper and cardboard.

This factory was opened in the late 19th century and closed in the 1980's. The area is now open for the public and most of the buildings have found new use.



The building on the right now houses a café and an art gallery.



This is the former headquarters of the company, which later became UPM-Kymmene, a huge international forest giant. It's called the Griffin House because of the griffin in the logo of the company.



These storage buildings were demolished in 2022.



The deeper you go, the older factory buildings you'll find.



The oldest part of the factory is on a separate island.



The only clearly abandoned building in the location is the former power station.



I know several urbexers who have managed to enter the building, but the company owning the property has since built a fence. It was too solid to find a point of entry, as it was in the middle of the day and the area was surprisingly busy.


For more see here: https://desertedfi...-kuusankoski-2020/

The next location: a small regional hospital, which was about to close in a few years, and to be more specific, its residential area.

Back in the days it was common to build apartments for doctors and nurses next to hospitals. Those located in bigger cities have been later sold to apartment rental companies, those in smaller cities like this one have found no buyers.



The newest houses were from the late 1970's or early 1980's. They were in the worst shape.



Even the furniture of the last inhabitants was still there.



There were still inhabitants in this house, but it too was decaying fast.

More: https://desertedfi...dential-area-2020/

With the help of my former school mate, who is now a local urbexer too, I managed to find this tiny yellow house.



I don't know when it has been abandoned, but on Google Maps there are still two cars on the yard and an old lady carrying a rake.



The downstairs was mainly empty.



Wonder if the paint has come off itself.



Upstairs there were a lot more signs of life.



Somebody loves Venice.

More photos: https://desertedfi...vers-cottage-2020/

So here we go, cottage of the day.



This one is located close to a former railway station, so it probably has something to do with the railroad. It wasn't a former station, though.



A-ha, I can sense a point of entry.



Total destruction, that's what it was.



It had clearly been a very beautiful building, but the last renovations were done decades ago.



Collapse had started.

As usual, there is more: https://desertedfi...ders-cottage-2020/

After almost a month of spending all my weekends touring one corner of Finland, I decided to go back to my former home town for a weekend getaway. One of my friends told they had found an abandoned cottage in a villa area just outside town and they wanted to take me there.



They told me that they had found the cottage just a few weeks previously, and the doors had been wide open. There hadn't been much to see, it was just a small and cute building according to them.



Well, now there was nothing to see, as somebody had shut the door for good.

So it was once again my turn to take them to an adventure. Nearby was an old police association summer villa, which I had visited (and featured here) previously, so there we head then.



Looks exactly like it looked a year before.



The roof had already come down the previous summer, so it was a miracle the house was still standing.



Quite a pink dream.



So not much change from the previous year. The building was demolished the following winter.

More: https://desertedfi.../#jp-carousel-6423

On my way back home I took an unusual route, which ran through most of northeastern and eastern Finland. I knew that a historically significant railway station had burned down just a short while ago and was eager to see what was left of it.



Turns out not much. Such a sad sight.

Continuing my journey in the Finnish summer. I read a news article about a vocational school, which would be demolished. As soon as I had some business in that part of the country, I drove there only to see that work had already been started.



The fence was too solid for me, so I decided to walk around the area to see if there were any weak spots.



They had indeed left the gates open and gone home for the weekend.



There would have been a lot left to explore. Unfortunately there were some private homes behind the property and one of them had a very angry and noisy dog. So much for this one, then.

By the way the photos have been shot at around midnight. The Finnish summer is really that light.

What do we have there at 6 am the following morning?



Exactly what I thought it was. Yet another tiny abandoned cottage.





With a little creative chaos inside.



And a leaky roof.



A bed with lavender sheets, where nobody dreams anymore.



34 year old news.

More: https://desertedfi...ride-cottage-2020/

While touring Finland I had a reunion with an old friend, whom I hadn't met in almost 10 years. She had also started urbexing and told me about her friend, who was a real deal in the sport.

She introduced me to her and this new acquaintance of mine would tip off potential locations whenever she learned I was close to one of them. That's how she introduced me to the barbed wire villa.

Now remember, we are in Finland. There are no strict trespassing laws and a rather lax altitude about abandoned places. That's why this place was such a curiosity. And also a very beautiful building.



There aren't many buildings like this here, either. But there was something strange about it.



Notice it already?



That is barbed wire. The owner really didn't want any trespassers in their property and this was the measure they chose to keep us away.



Another entrance, the same story. Every potential entrance was full of this including inside the building. In my 16 years of urbexing I have never ever seen barbed wire before. And I've explored some 250-300 locations.

I didn't want to get cuts, so I left this time. But, spoler alert, I have managed to explore this place since.

All the information I could manage to get from this place can be seen here: https://desertedfi...-think-im-welcome/

The place is related to these remains of a former factory.

This here is a former mental asylum - or what remains of it.

Located in the countryside by a lake it was closed down in the early 2000's. In the early 2010's a huge spa resort was built on its grounds. The oldest buildings were preserved and restored, most of the others were demolished. Then there was this one, which ended in the hands of a private investor and has since just stood there.

It was a beautiful summer day and there were lots of people around. I didn't expect to gain access, but life is full of surprises, isn't it.



The building was mostly corridors.



This panel controlled the lights in one ward.



Even some equipment had been left behind.



The bright yellow doors seem a little out of place here.



Empty halls with beautiful light.



More panels.



Time won't stop by covering it.

More photos: https://desertedfi...tal-asylum-2020-2/

Next up: a former regional hospital.



I never imagined I could actually visit this place. It was owned by a large cement company, who wanted to demolish it to enlarge their mining activities, but were prevented by the authorities. I knew the place was heavily guarded and very badly vandalized.



The place consisted of a 1960's building seen in the first picture, a 1930's building seen above and several wooden buildings from the early 20th century, which were protected and thus were out of bounds for the demolition crews.



Fences surrounded the property and this small gap was the only way in. Back then I was slim enough to make my way in.



I was aware of extensive vandalism, but when I saw it with my own eyes, it was even worse than I had imagined. I had never seen such destruction before.



It was evident that the building was a pretty nice one for a 1960's building. The materials used in the lobby were of a high quality and having been maintained, it would have been a pretty nice place.



The kitchen in the older, 1930's built building. The tag on one of the machines complains about shitty potatoes at school. Surely a good reason to thrash a building, isn't it.



The vandalism in this part of the complex was a little less extensive.



Typical to buildings from this era, the place was built in several levels. Not very friendly for disabled people.



Now this is engineering. As i said, there were several levels, more precisely floors and half-floors. The elevator has two doors just for that: one door for the full floors, one door for the half floors.



I stand by what I said. I love this era of architecture. Sadly both the buildings were demolished in 2021.

There is more, as usual: https://desertedfi...lappeenranta-2020/

Loved the read-up, Loved the story, Loved the pictures!

Excited to see more pictures and content from ya!

Posted by Icedcoldmine Loved the read-up, Loved the story, Loved the pictures! Excited to see more pictures and content from ya!

Thank you! I promise to deliver!

Spoiler alert: I have had a summer car for the past three summers and have done a tour on each one of them. I've spent months living in my car driving around the country. The car is back and for this year's tour I even received an artist grant.

So there will be more. A lot more.