Returning to Nature
Abandoned Cottages of Småland | Sweden
In the forests of Sweden's most famous province, Småland, home to the stories of famous children's book author Astrid Lindgren, countless red-painted wooden cottages stand abandoned.
Slowly, nature is taking over the homes that once were bustling with life as the rural community leaves for the city or moves into newly built homes. These old houses become time capsules that take you back to days gone by. With the old curtains still in place, wallpaper and paint peeling off the wall, chimneys crumbling down and old cast iron cookers, vedspis in Swedish, rusting away, these smallholdings slowly disappear, the memories they hold forgotten. ‘It's cheaper to just leave them as they are,’ a local tells me, ‘some get a second life as a holiday home.’
