This is quite fascinating!

Sixty-two years ago in the western city of Pori, a mysterious sealed envelope from a wealthy banker named Rafael Mellin was handed over to the local association Pori Seura.

The group was established in 1901 and promotes the city’s culture and historical preservation but also is active in local environmental and social issues.

Two weeks ago the Satakunta Museum announced that it was time to open the letter and there has been wild speculation about its contents ever since.

Some have suggested it might contain important banking information, gossip or personal confessions, others said it was empty and part of a decades-long practical joke by Mellin….

The first item pulled from the envelope was a notebook, which appears to be the bank’s secret logs, listing many clients and potential borrowers….

The notebook itself contains the names of hundreds of Pori residents, with more – or less – flattering notes about them. “Unpleasant person,” reads a note about one person, “intelligent and unassuming,” reads another.

Several others read, “Has inherited a better future after his father was secretly engaged to Miss Rosenlew,” “serving time in Kakola [prison] for arson,” “will marry rich,” “acted very poorly,” and so on.

Those notes appear to have been written by bank directors aiming to avoid making bad deals and lending money to the wrong sort of people.

All of the individuals mentioned in the notebook are now deceased, but if the rare book had been published at the beginning of the 1900s, it would have been scandalous, according to Hakala.

Read more: Finnish banker’s notebook finally opened, revealing century-old secrets