Schools - The Historical Society Of Swedish Speaking Schools In Finland

The school’s activities have mainly taken place in or near the school building. Therefore, the schoolhouse can be perceived to represent the school in question. I have made comments on the importance of the schoolhouse in a blog post. As a web editor I have tried to collect pictures and photograph as many school houses as possible. It has become a fairly random collection, which is largely based on where I moved during the 2010s and what literature I have come to read. In some cases, I have received the pictures of other photographers on request. Most of the images are thus from the present, but in the collection there are also older images whose sources should still be updated since I failed to record them at the scan. Taking pictures of the schools is not always easy. In principle I have taken pictures of the main entrance, but sometimes it is obscured by trees and bushes and sometimes the school yard seems to be a more representative environment. I have published pictures of the schoolhouse at different times and in some cases with numbers indicated which was the oldest schoolhouse.
Initially I concentrated on public education schools, but some vocational schools and schools in the free education have also come up. My intention has always been to supplement this collection, both geographically and temporally, whenever possible. However, many of today’s schools operate in school buildings that have previously housed another school, for example a primary school.
On wikipedia you can find, a list of former primary schools in Finland at https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_Suomen_kansakouluista. In addition to the school’s name, the school’s coordinates are sometimes also specified, the village or district where the school was located. The list includes both Finnish and Swedish language schools. My view is that the list seems to be thoroughly made.

I am very grateful for pictures sent to me and will publish on this blog all good pictures of school houses in Swedish speaking Finland from present and past times. Please, send the pictures to the address martin.gripenberg@kolumbus.fi.

The school houses have been arranged here, based on the school’s name and region. The school’s location has also been stated. However, there is no clear method for organizing schools, since many have the name Swedish first and then the name of the place or have changed their name or school form, perhaps repeatedly. Municipalities have come and gone and changed their name through the ages. Many schools are also better known by their nicknames such as Broban, Bullan, Norsen, Revan, Zillen. I have mentioned those names if I have considered them as general good, but the schools are found here based on their official names.

Notes on the school and schoolhouse have been made as I have found credible information. Often I have also been able to state the source fill this information. A lot of the information is obtained directly from the Internet and Wikipedia. Often the information is also based on knowledge that I have acquired during my 30 years as a school inspector.
Schoolhouses have been divided into the main categories “Old schoolhouses”, “Primary schools”, “High schools”, “Vocational institutes”, “Folkhögskolor” and “Other schoolhouses”. The subcategories are for compulsory schools “year 0-6” and “year 7-8” and for all school houses regions “Nyland “,” Åboland “. “Åland”, “Ostrobothnia” and “Other Finland”.

On the South Coast’s website svenskskola.fi, you will find contact information for currently operating Swedish-language day care centers, preschools,

elementary schools, after scool activities(‘eftis’), basic education, language baths, colleges, second-stage vocational education, apprenticeship training, music education institutions, folk high schools and preparatory schools. In addition, there is contact information for the municipalities’ responsibility and contact persons for all these categories. Åland is not included in the register. In general, there are no pictures of the educational institutions in this register.
On the internet pages of pedanet there is current information about all active schools, but not pictures of the schools.
In particular, I have noted that as I have visited the schools to get a picture of them, the schoolhouse has during the summer strikingly often been a building site because less or larger repair work has been underway. Many times I have also “come too late” in the sense that the schoolhouse has just been taken out of use and therefore in the list below it falls into the category “Old schoolhouse”. It has also happened that I found by chance to just completed school houses. This indicates that a significant restructuring of the school network has been in progress around the years 2017-2020 regarding primary schools for grades 0-6.
The school building has often been associated with other functions in the new buildings such as libraries, day care, service centers. In some Ostrobothnian municipalities, the term “Learning Center” is then used.

SchoolsPrimary schoolsGymnasiumVocational schoolsFolk High SchoolsOthers

Zacharias Topeliusskolan, Helsingfors

Posted: July 15, 2019