Stockholm Photoblog

Finnboda shipyard: Exploring abandoned places in the middle of the night

While walking around Kvarnholmen a few months ago, I noticed some likely abandoned places worthy of investigation. Two nights ago I finally just went exploring, and had the most exciting photo trip so far.

I left the apartment around midnight with my camera, a headlamp, my maglight and a beer.

I made a left on Finnbodavarvsväg, which I believe means Finnboda yard way. Since the late 19th century there was a shipbuilding yard here in Nacka, but now they are slowly converting it to housing. There is still a lot of industrial decay in the area though.

I also added a cool new image rollover effect and drop shadow which I think makes this blog look more spiffy :). Anyway, here is an aerial photo from bing maps showing where I went. I basically followed the red path of arrows, and my goal was to check out that house on the hill in the trees behind the parkinglot.

 

Here I turned around and walked behind this building for some reason. I actually ended up going inside but those pictures are at the end.

Walking in the tight space between the rock and the building.

Sitting at the base of a staircase that starts a path leading up the hill.

The coolest thing was this partially dismantled staircase. It doesn’t make a path going straight to the house, but rather turns left and heads towards the Danvikshem retirement castle. Anyway, I used the railing to claw my way up.

 

 

I’m really interested to know what that formation built into the mountain side was used for… I imagine a huge ship would be sitting there back in the day.

Here’s a 6 second exposure of the last leg of the staircase which goes up to the parkinglot. I would have never made it up this hill without those rails to drag myself up.

And here’s an 8 second exposure. It’s like daytime!

I really love this next photo. You have these beautiful modern apartments right across the street from an old factory building with a hopelessly corroding roof. It’s amazing they even built these new buildings without demolishing this entire wasteland beforehand.

This next photo is probably my favorite. There are water drops on the lens–which I noticed and wiped off for a subsequent photo– but I actually like the “bleeding colors” effect so I posted this one instead.

So here is the car parking lot which for some reason orphans the house on the hill. There is no path to it and you just have to sort of walk through the trees.

Overlooking the yard.

These two buildings in the center are also modern (housing I think), just sitting akwardly in the middle of nowhere.

And here we jump right into the house. For some reason I was too excited to take a photo of the outside at first, but I have some later. The place was filled with grafitti, of course.

It wasn’t really a house, but just designed to look like one from the outside. There wasn’t a single front door, but the entire wall of it was doors to these small compartmented rooms. I imagine they used to store generators or other heavy equipment in these rooms because the whole building was solid concrete and it seemed purpose built for storage rather than living.

Here is a piece of shit latter going up to the second level, but at this point I walked outside and around the cliff facing side of the house to get into the basement.

There’s just a door in the wall with all this crap in front of it I had to stumble over, but inside was a colorful room of artwork.

I couldn’t decide which one of these pics I liked better so I just posted them both 😉

I set my backpack down in this room when posing for the photo, and then totally forgot it existed. I walked around the rest of the night without it, went home, fell asleep, then woke up in the morning not being able to find my waterbottle and realizing my backpack wasn’t there. Then I had to come back here in the rain and it totally sucked.

Facing out the basement door.

 

Now this factory across the street is huge and seems to be in good condition; I’ve made it my next target of investigation. I’ve seen pictures on Flikr of people going inside so it must be accessible. Anyway filing away that adventure for another day :).

 

These next few pics are from the outside of the house.

 

If you look at the bottom of the photo above you can see how there are grooves in the concrete foundation and a sort of track assembly right there with the tree branch laying on it. That’s why I think they used to store heavy equipment in here.

These photos are actually kinda creepy now in retrospect and I would likely be hella scared up there by myself if I hadn’t been drinking liquid courage.

Ok so back in the compartment with the ladder, here is the upper floor. One thing I only realized when examining these pictures later was that this upper floor, and the lower floor beneath it, are actually a quite deal narrower than the building itself.

 

And here’s the ladder to the attic. As Cody pointed out, the mural behind it looks like Family Guy porn 😀

This photo is horrifying.

Ah much nicer. Just putting my handlamp and maglight on the ground in a room was surprisingly bright enough for picturing and navigation, but by this time my eyes had definately adjusted to the dark.

So notice how wide this attic is. It’s like twice as wide as the second level Family Guy room and the ground level, and also seems wider than the basement room. I feel like half the house is hidden away somewhere and I didn’t get to see it, but I didn’t see any doors or anything or any other rooms except those ones facing the front. Maybe I will try going back to see if I missed some hidden away compartments.

This is pretty cool lighting just from my flashlight.

 

 

I went down the ladder to the Family Guy room again and there was a hole in the floor to the compartment below. This was the first room in the house I took a picture in, where you saw those gas cannisters. Now I don’t actually remember walking through that doorway and it seems to be a hallway that turns right, so perhaps thats how you get into the other compartments and I just missed it in my initial excitement or something.

So coming down the main ladder I realized it was actually fucking broken in half on one side.

Like seriously, I’m lucky this rinky dink piece of shit didn’t split on the other side because I would have fallen on the concrete.

Ok so at this point I got all the exploration I needed from the house, and the EXIF date on the next photo shows 2am. So two hours had elapsed up until this point where I decided to start walking back.

This is a great shot. See those windows are fake, and I really don’t see how to get to the second floor on this face of the building; the family guy room was clearly only half the width. I really have an inkling to go back now the more I think about it.

Ok so this next photo I took months ago before I started putting photos on my website, and this is what initially sparked my interest in the house across the way. It looked so out of place, especially since that parking lot just ends in inaccessible distance before it.

This was the first time I noticed the house and decided it might be abandoned, and added it to my “list of things to check out”. You may also notice that hole in the foundation which serves as the basement door.

There’s a lot of other places I have marked on my list from this initial walk around the area that I havn’t gone to yet, but this trip two nights ago was a great start. I guess you could say I “survey the area” before exploring in places where I might need to be cautious by myself. If you read the Nacka Cellphone Walk entry I posted a few weeks ago, I actually went up to that house in the daytime via the parkinglot. I was too nervous to actually go inside because I wasn’t prepared with my flashlight or anything and just had my cellphone, but I think it’s important to test the waters before throwing yourself inside somewhere. Or maybe I’m just a woman.

Anyway, now I started to head back down the hill. Notice the ladder on the side of the building, that’s the one I climb up later :).

 

It was starting to get brighter outside. At this time of year in Sweden, the twilight starts around 3am.

I walked back down the staircase again using the rails as support.

I realize some of these photos are basically duplicates from when I was heading up… so eat me.

 

 

OK here comes the fun part :D. This building clearly looked abandoned too, so as I walked down the stairs around it I decided to search for an entrance. There was a set of double doors on the side of the building, and though they were closed there was no vertical frame between them so I sort of just… pulled them open and they opened ;).

Yep. I actually felt quite brazen now. I really didn’t dwell in here long to be honest. After posing for the photo below I walked into the next room.

I didn’t walk out on this floor at all, but turned immediately left for a staircase to the second level.

I set the camera down on the cement floor right at the top of the stairs. Creepy.

This one is cool, it looks like the sun but it’s actually just a street light!

I so kewl.

In retrospect I should have spent more time in here but I was feeling a bit nervous so I walked out the exit to the staircase on the outside. It was unlocked too, fyi.

And I definately wasn’t going to let this opportunity

go to waste!

Epic.

 

One final view of the building before I turned and walked home. This was definately the most exciting trip I’ve been on, and I learned that even if a building looks secure on the outside you should just try to open the door anyway and maybe get lucky :0

The end!