The Swedish Football Grounds That Time Forgot: Eight Stadiums That Made The Game, And Then Vanished
Every country has its ghost stadiums. The grounds that held the great nights, the biggest finals, the record crowds. Here are eight of them.
SFN Editor ·
Råsunda Stadion (Solna, 1937 to 2012)
For 75 years, Råsunda was where Swedish football lived. Opened on 18 April 1937 with AIK beating Malmö FF 4-0, designed by architects Birger Borgström and Sven Ivar Lind, it became the national stadium by default. It hosted the 1958 World Cup final, where a 17-year-old Brazilian named Pelé chipped Bengt Gustavsson and broke Swedish hearts in front of 49,737 spectators. It hosted Euro 1992, including Thomas Brolin's legendary winner against England on 17 June. It hosted the 1995 Women's World Cup final where Norway beat Germany 2-0, making Råsunda the first stadium ever to host both a men's and a women's World Cup final.
The record attendance was 52,943, set on 26 September 1965 against West Germany. AIK played here throughout. The final match ever, on 22 November 2012, was an AIK 1-2 Napoli Europa League fixture. Three days later, supporters walked in with screwdrivers and carried the stadium home in pieces. Demolition began in 2013. On the site today stand roughly 700 apartments, a Telenor-anchored office building, and streets named Bollgatan and Råsundavägen.
Gamla Ullevi (Gothenburg, 1916 to 2007)
This is the Gothenburg stadium that is not the wave-roofed Ullevi from 1958 still standing today, and not the new stadium from 2009 that carries the same name. It is the original: a 10,000-capacity ground opened on 17 September 1916 on the site of an old velodrome, designed by Karl M Bengtsson. The first goal was scored by Erik Börjesson, the IFK Göteborg legend who had been in the Swedish side that beat Norway 11-3 at the same location in Sweden's first ever international in 1908.
For 91 years it was the shared home of Gothenburg's three alliance clubs: IFK Göteborg, GAIS and Örgryte IS. The record attendance was 32,357 on 2 May 1957 when Örgryte played Elfsborg. It was never UEFA-approved, so all of IFK's great European nights, including the 1994-95 Champions League run, were played at Nya Ullevi next door. The last match was IFK 0-0 Halmstad on 5 November 2006. Demolition began on 9 January 2007. A new stadium with the same name opened on the exact same plot on 5 April 2009.
Malmö Stadion (Malmö, 1958 to 2025)
Designed by Fritz Jaenecke and Sten Samuelson with the same sweeping wave-roof as their sister project Nya Ullevi in Gothenburg, Malmö Stadion opened on 28 May 1958, four days before the World Cup began. Its first match was West Germany 3-1 Argentina in front of 30,953 spectators, still the ground's all-time attendance record. The referee noticed the two teams' shirts clashed for black-and-white television, so IFK Malmö had to lend Argentina their yellow shirts.
It was Malmö FF's home for 51 years, covering the entire Bob Houghton era of the 1970s that produced three Allsvenskan titles and, in 1979, a run to the European Cup final in Munich. Sergej Bubka set the outdoor pole vault world record at 6.10 metres here on 5 August 1991. Euro 1992 Group 1 matches for Denmark, England and France were played here, including the night Denmark stunned France 2-1 on the way to their eventual tournament win. Malmö FF moved out after a 6-0 win over GIF Sundsvall on 9 November 2008. Demolition began in November 2025. A new athletics and football arena is scheduled for completion at the end of 2028 or early 2029.
Söderstadion (Stockholm, 1966 to 2013)
Hammarby's heart. Opened in 1966 on the site of the earlier Johanneshovs Idrottsplats, Söderstadion held 12,800 at most. The record crowd was 22,000 on 31 October 1982 when Hammarby faced IFK Göteborg in the title decider. Bajen lost that match 1-3 and, with it, their best chance of a first championship until 2001, when the title actually came on a magical night here: Hammarby 3-2 Örgryte on 21 October 2001, sealing their first and so far only Allsvenskan trophy.
The stadium was also the home of Sweden's bandy championship for decades, hosting the final annually until 1989 and the 1987 Bandy World Championship final. The last football match was on 23 June 2013, Hammarby 1-1 Ängelholm in Superettan, when Kennedy Bakircioglu scored the last goal ever at Söderstadion with a late equaliser. Demolition began in early 2015. The plot then sat empty for ten years while redevelopment plans stalled. In late 2025, Stockholm Municipality finally rolled out a temporary artificial pitch on what locals still call helig mark, holy ground.
Stockholms Stadion (Stockholm, 1912 to present, but no longer for men's elite football)
Built for the 1912 Olympics, designed by Torben Grut in national romantic style with its distinctive brick facade and twin towers, Stockholms Stadion is still standing, is still gorgeous, and is still the oldest continuously used Olympic stadium in the world. But it is no longer a home for men's elite football.
Djurgårdens IF moved here from Tranebergs IP in 1936 and played 381 Allsvenskan matches on the ground. Their attendance record was 21,995, set in a derby against AIK on 16 August 1946. Their biggest win was 8-1 over Elfsborg in 2005. AIK, too, called Stadion home from 1912 until the move to Råsunda in 1937. The last Djurgården men's match, on 30 June 2013, was a 2-2 draw with Öster in front of 14,276 before the move to Tele2 Arena. Emil Bergström scored the last goal. Today Stockholms Stadion still hosts Djurgården's women's team, the DN-galan athletics meeting, and concerts, but the men's league game that built it is gone.
Tranebergs IP (Stockholm, 1911 to 1935)
The forgotten first home of Djurgårdens IF Fotboll. Opened in October 1911 after Djurgården's leadership declined an offer from Anton Johansson of the Swedish Football Association to share the new Råsunda with AIK (they suspected, probably correctly, that Johansson favoured AIK). Inaugurated by Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, the future king. The first match saw Djurgården beat AIK 3-1 in front of 1,659 spectators. In 1912, it hosted two matches of the Olympic football tournament, Finland 3-2 Italy and Finland 2-1 Russia.
Djurgården won the Svenska Mästerskapet four times during the Tranan years (1912, 1915, 1917, 1920). The 25-year lease with Stockholm Municipality expired in 1935, and the city announced that the site would be used for housing. The last match was Djurgårdens IF 5-2 Skärblacka IF on 29 September 1935. The housing was never built. The site is today Tranebergs Fritidspark, a small green space with a memorial plaque, a stretch of the original western-curve stone wall, and a pair of football goals someone installed for children to play on.
Strömvallen (Gävle, 1903 to 2015 as elite ground, still standing)
Gefle IF's home for 92 years. The original sports ground at Mattonska vretarna opened in 1903; the stadium as Swedish football knew it was formally inaugurated with its first grandstand on 3 June 1923. Strömvallen was the oldest Allsvenskan football ground still in use by the time Gefle IF finally left on 30 April 2015 for the new Gavlevallen.
Beyond football, the ground was the home track of the legendary Swedish runner Gunder Hägg, who represented Gefle IF during his record-breaking 1942 summer. Curiously, despite racing often at Strömvallen and drawing crowds of nearly ten thousand, Hägg never set any of his sixteen world records in his home city of Gävle; he missed a 3,000 metre world record at Strömvallen that summer by a fraction of a second. The stadium's all-time attendance record is 9,333, set not at a Hägg race but at a 1949 athletics competition for the city's firefighters. In 1995, Strömvallen also hosted the bronze medal match of the FIFA Women's World Cup (USA vs China). After Gefle IF left, the stadium sat essentially empty for a couple of years before a supporter-led association, Strömvallen Fotboll, reopened it for lower-division and youth football. Elite football has not returned. Gävle Municipality now operates the ground as a community sports venue, and there is an ongoing exhibition on 120 years of local sports history installed at the arena itself.
Fredriksskans IP (Kalmar, 1919 to 2010 as elite ground, still standing)
Kalmar FF's home for 91 years. Opened in 1919, officially renamed Fredriksskans in 1943 after a 17th-century military fortification on the site. The attendance record is 15,243, set against Malmö FF in 1949. It was here that Roland Sandberg made his Kalmar FF debut against Mönsterås in 1966 before going on to be a landslag regular, and here that Kalmar FF won their only Svenska Cupen of the 2000s, beating IFK Göteborg 3-0 in the 2007 final.
Kalmar FF played their last regular match on the ground in 2010 and moved to Guldfågeln Arena for the 2011 season. The famous 2008 Allsvenskan title, Kalmar FF's first and so far only Swedish men's championship under manager Nanne Bergstrand, was actually won while still playing at Fredriksskans, and the success of that title-winning side was itself the decisive argument that a bigger, UEFA-compliant ground was needed. Fredriksskans still stands and hosts lower-division clubs. In June 2020, ten years after Kalmar FF's last league match there, it briefly returned to Allsvenskan when Guldfågeln Arena relaid its pitch and matches had to be played on the old ground. It holds about 9,000 today, and Håkan Hellström's 14 July 2023 concert drew 16,233, the new site record.
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Eight grounds, one quiet rule
What these eight places share is not just concrete and history. It is the fact that Swedish football, like football everywhere, is a sport of permanent rebuilding. Every generation tears down its cathedrals and builds new ones. UEFA's rules tighten. City councils reclaim land for apartments. Clubs chase the sightlines and hospitality revenue that old grounds with running tracks cannot deliver.
Nobody blames them. Strawberry Arena might be a better matchday experience than Råsunda was. Gavlevallen is a better stadium than Strömvallen. Guldfågeln Arena packs sound in a way Fredriksskans never could.
But when Pelé scored at Råsunda, when Bubka cleared 6.10 metres at Malmö Stadion, when Kennedy Bakircioglu scored the last-ever goal at Söderstadion, when Erik Börjesson broke the deadlock at the brand-new Ullevi in 1916, they did it in buildings that no longer exist. The ground those moments live on is not concrete anymore. It is collective memory, black-and-white photographs, grainy YouTube clips, and supporter conversations that start with "I was there."
Which is, in the end, what stadiums always were. Concrete bowls were just the part that crumbled.
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*Sources: Wikipedia (Råsunda Stadium, Gamla Ullevi, Gamla Ullevi 1916, Malmö Stadion, Söderstadion, Stockholms Stadion, Tranebergs IP, Strömvallen, Fredriksskans IP, Djurgårdens IF Fotboll, Hammarby IF, Kalmar FF, Gefle IF), malmo.se, dif.se, kalmarff.se, ifkgoteborg.se, SVT Nyheter, Gefle Dagblad, Mitt i, FotbollDirekt, Expressen, difhistoria.se, SvenskaFans, EM-fotboll.se, Halmstad Municipality.*