Where You Came to Die

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In the far reaches of the largest fjord in Norway, perched on the side of a mountain is a 16,000 square foot castle overlooking the town of Luster. For all its fairytale appearance, when it operated as the Lyster Sanatorium, this was the place where many came to die.

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Harastølen, formerly Lyster Sanatorium

The sanitarium was constructed in 1902, to be used as a hospital for terminally ill tuberculosis (TB) patients. The location was chosen due to the risk of contamination posed by the tuberculosis bacterium. The sanatorium was build to hold about 120 patients, and there was an average 2 patients for every employee, who also lived on the premises. The patients were isolated from the outside world, and moved to the mountain because it was believed the fresh, crisp air would lessen their symptoms.

From the steamship-quay in Lyster, there was an electric cable car up to the sanatorium. Later a 4-mile road with thirteen hairpin turns also led up to the hospital. 

Between 1902 to 1958 when it was repurposed, approximately 15,000 patients passed through its doors. It was the largest TB hospital in Norway. Until the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, patients were treated with fresh, dry air and plombage of the lungs and removal of ribs.

The average stay at the sanatorium was 4 to 5 months. Lyster was public and open to patients of all age groups, and socioeconomic subsets of society.

About 250,000 Norwegians died from consumption between 1895 to 1955. "TB can damage lung tissue, creating additional surfaces for other respiratory pathogens to attach, and impair recovery and the immune system."

Due to improved living conditions and diet, natural selection and efforts to reduce contact with infectious cases, TB began to decline by 1800. There was a spike during the Russian influenza pandemic in 1889, and during World War I which was tied to the 1918 pandemic. This was due to a shortage of medical care, overcrowding and conversion of latent to active infection.

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Lyster Sanitorium c.early 1900s

Throughout the years it was open the complex was expanded by several buildings, to make it as self-sufficient as possible. Electricity was provided from a private water turbine, there was a chapel with a morgue, post office, laundry, icehouse, stables, and a pig farm. Separate housing was built for the doctors and nurses, two family houses for stokers and gardeners.

In 1959, it was converted into a psychiatric hospital and renamed to Harastølen. Most of the patients were displaced from their hometown of Bergen due to a forced closure of the local asylum. ​Many patients tried to commit suicide due to their mental illness. They constructed a fence on the staircase to prevent patients from jumping down to their death. The asylum closed in 1991. 

In the 1990s, it was used to house about 340 asylum seekers from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Conflicts arose between the immigrants and the local community, in which the refugees complained it was worse to live there due to its remoteness, then from where they had fled.

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Cable car to the asylum

​The once modern, thriving hospital was left to the elements, the process of decay taking its toll on the exterior and interior of the building. 

​It is no surprise that the building is said to be replete with ghosts and residual hauntings from the time it would house those hoping for a treatment of a disease that was incurable, and then for those whose brain was diseased. There was also the isolation of this place, which many perceived as a type of exile.

Screams, mutterings and distant conversations along with footsteps are heard especially in the staircase that had to be fenced off in order to prevent suicides.

Strangely little has been published about the morgue, and the amount of deaths that occurred at the sanitorium and later the asylum — which was an inevitable thing considering sick people were housed there. It's almost as if they were forgotten in death, as much as in life.

In 2015 the site was used as a movie set, and was visited by urban explorers and legend trippers.

After being closed in 2021 the new owners plan to renovate the building to be used as a hotel, initially with 30 or 40 rooms.
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Today, the sanitarium is inhabited by people working on rehabilitating the old structure, but who knows how many of the non-living still walk the hallways.

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