Sweden’s Classic Car Graveyard

Sweden’s classic car graveyard: 1,000 automobiles from a bygone era worth £100,000 found rusting in a forest

• The scrapyard was established by two brothers to store cars abandoned by servicemen during the Second World War
• Rusting classic cars including vintage Opels, Fords, Volvos, Buicks, Audis, Saabs and a Sunbeam
• Hikers have discovered trees growing around bodywork and moss covering seats and steering wheels
• The forgotten vintage vehicles are worth an estimated £100,000 in scrap value alone

Inside this forest lies 1,000 forgotten cars from the 1950s - a vintage car collector's dream which has been left to rust.

The scrapyard was established by two brothers to store cars abandoned by servicemen during the Second World War now lies neglected. 

Rusting classic cars including vintage Opels, Fords, Volvos, Buicks, Audis, Saabs and a Sunbeam litter the natural undergrowth. 

Vintage: Inside this forest lies 1,000 forgotten cars from the 1950s - a vintage car collector's dream which has been left to rust

Hikers have discovered trees growing around bodywork and moss covering seats and steering wheels.

The forgotten vintage vehicles are worth an estimated £100,000 in scrap value alone.

Photographer Svein Nordrum, 54, ventured into the dense woods to photograph the abandoned vehicles.

Mr Nordrum said: 'It is very quiet in there. It is a strange feeling when you're there, as if you're on the edge of the world.

Rust: Cars lie piled on top of each other in the forest in the county of Bastnas, a mining town in southern Sweden

'The forest is very dense. You can only see a couple of cars at any one time - the rest disappear into the woods.'

Two Swedish brothers founded the scrap yard in the 1950s to break down vehicles which had been abandoned by American soldiers leaving Europe after the Second World War.

They then sold on spare parts for repairs.

The brothers had a house each among the forest of broken automobiles.

Car collector's paradise: Rusting classic cars including vintage Opels, Fords, Volvos, Buicks, Audis, Saabs and a Sunbeam litter the natural undergrowth

The scrapyard was established by two brothers to store cars abandoned by servicemen in during the Second World War now lies neglected

Forest that time forgot: Hikers have discovered trees growing around bodywork and moss covering seats and steering wheels

They continued to trade until the 1980s before they abandoned the site in the 1990s leaving the forest undergrowth to claim the cars.

Mr Nordrum said: 'The cars are now a part of nature in a way. The trees grow all over and through the cars, with branches sneaking through windows and over the bonnets.'

The car graveyard is just in the county of Bastnas, a mining town in southern Sweden.

A classic car is claimed by the undergrowth: Photographer Svein Nordrum ventured into a thick forest in southern Sweden where he found 1,000 forgotten cars from the 1950s

Classic: The car graveyard is located just in the county of Bastnas, a mining town in southern Sweden

The forgotten vintage vehicles are worth an estimated £100,000 in scrap value alone

The brothers who set up the scrapyard continued to trade until the 1980s before it was abandoned leaving the forest undergrowth to claim the cars

Photographer Svein Nordrum, 54, ventured into the dense woods to photograph the abandoned vehicles

By-gone era: The brothers who established the car scrapyard had a house each among the forest of broken automobiles

According to the photographer some people in Sweden want to remove the cars but environmentalists keep stopping them because wildlife now live in the bodywork

Abandoned: Vintage cars are stacked up in the forest in southern Sweden which have been left there since the Second World War

The 1,000 corroded vehicles are collectively worth an estimated £100,000 in scrap but efforts to remove the cars from the forest have been thwarted.

Mr Nordrum said: 'Some people in Sweden want to remove the cars, but environmentalists keep stopping them. 

'Apparently birds and other animals have made nests in the bodywork.'

A spokesperson for ASM Auto Recycling, a UK-wide car salvage company, said: 'The standard price for scrap metal is about £100 a ton, so 1000 cars would be worth about £100,000 in scrap.

'The price of metal goes up and down. An average car would be worth around £100 in scrap at the moment, but it changes from time to time.'