ESQ wrote: ↑Tue May 19, 2020 8:41 am
Per wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 2:36 pm
ESQ wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 1:38 pm
Per wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 12:53 pm
Björklöven (the other team in my heart) celebrated their 50th anniversary on Saturday. The team was created through the merger of the hockey sections from two sports clubs, IFK Umeå and Sandåkerns SK on May 15th 1970.
Was IFK Umeå the Bjork, and Sandåkerns SK the Loven? Or vice versa?
Well, in the dry summer of 1888 both Umeå and Sundsvall burnt to the ground.
As Umeå was rebuilt, they made a number of broad avenues in the city and lined them with birch trees, to prevent future fires from spreading. As a result Umeå gradually became known as The City of Birchtrees.
This in turn, lead to the IFK Umeå hockey team getting the nickname Björklöven, the birch Leaves, as a tongue in cheek reference to Canadian hockey combined with the birch trees of Umeå.
As the two teams Sandåkern and Umeå merged, they needed a new name, and of course neither team would happily just adopt the other team’s name, so someone suggested that Björklöven should become the official name, and that’s what they did.
So, whereas most hockey teams in Sweden are just named for the city or neighbourhood they’re from, Björklöven is one of the few to have a more North American style name.
Thanks Per, after your scoop that Hoglander grew up in a village called Donkey-Swamp, this is my second favorite bit of Swedish trivia!
Bockträsk is actually ”goat swamp” or should I say ”buck swamp”? ’Bock’ is a male goat, which I guess could be called buck or billy in English. Also, while most Swedes think swamp when they hear träsk, the word is commonly used for lakes in the far north.
Either way, if you liked the story behind the name Björklöven, you may also like the story behind Vita Hästen, another team in Hockeyallsvenskan. Vita Hästen means White Horse and is a team from Norrköping that just like Björklöven is the result of a merger of the hockey sections of two teams. In this case IFK Norrköping and IK Sleipner.
You may notice that both in Umeå and Norrköping one of the original teams was called IFK and then the city name. This is because they are part of a movement that started in 1895 in Stockholm, IdrottsFöreningen Kamraterna, sort of ”the sports association the comrades”. These comrades have nothing with communism to do, it's more like "comrades in arms” or ”comradery.” These were some of the first sports teams in Sweden and in the year they were founded they managed to establish teams in at least seven cities. Today there are 168 IFK teams, mainly in Sweden, but also in Finland, Norway and Denmark. This movement was often tied to higher learning, and originally they mainly catered to the educated upper middle class. At the same time other sports teams called AIF were founded, AIF standing for Arbetarnas Idrottsförening, ie the Workers’ Sports Association... these mainly organised blue collar workers and tended to cooperate with the unions and the social democrats or sometimes the communists. There were also other teams just called IK or IF for Sports Club and Sports Association, as well as AIK standing for Allmänna Idrottsklubben, sort of ”the common sports club”. So, anyway, the sports movements of the late 19th, early 20th century was at times somewhat politicised, with the IFK teams mainly recruiting from the educated middle class and the AIF teams mainly manned by people doing physical labour. Thus eg in Kiruna, the mining town Börje and Stig Salming hail from, hockey games between IFK Kiruna and Kiruna AIF have always been very heated, and players have rarely moved between the two teams.
In Helsinki, Finland, for the longest time IFK Helsingfors only had Swedish speaking players, while the Finnish speakers played for Jokerit. It’s not as strict today though, they now opt for the best players available, and as Jokerit now has a Russian owner and plays in the KHL, the age old rivalry no longer really works the way it used to, as the teams don’t really play eachother any more.
But I digress. Back to Norrköping.
IK Sleipner was formed in 1903, when national romanticism was strong, and the name Sleipner ties in with wanting to tie back to a viking heritage as it is based in Old Norse religion; Sleipner is the eight legged horse that Odin rides. Thus their team logo featured a horse with eight legs.
Just as in Umeå, at some point the two main sports clubs in Norrköping decided to merge their hockey sections, partly so the city would have a better hockey team, partly so the original teams could focus on football and other sports. This came to fruition in 1967.
Now, most of the IFK teams use the same colours, white and blue, and IFK Norrköping consequently used white jerseys and blue shorts. Locally they were referred to as ”the white team”, and many disparingly referred to Sleipner as ”the horse”.
As they merged someone suggested the new team should be named ”The White Horse” and it won general approval. It may have helped that in the 1950’s and all the way into the 1970’s the Austrian operetto The White Horse Inn was hugely popular throughout Scandinavia, so The White Horse had a nice ring to it.
The White Horse has still never managed to reach the SHL, even though they have played qualification games four times.
So, now you know the story behind two of the more interesting team names in Swedish hockey.
In contrast, in 1971, when the two Jönköping based teams Husqvarna* IF and Vätterstads IF merged, the best they could come up with was HV71.
*yes, they make chain saws and motor cycles , among other things