Fighting on Ice

Last night I saw some very aggressive Swedes. Forty-eight of them, to be precise!

I went to Hovet, where one of the most popular ice-hockey teams of Stockholm – Djurgården – was playing against Södertälje. Here's a small video/photo report to give you an impression of the really fun but violent night!

Unfortunately the game wasn’t played in Globen, the biggest arena of Stockholm, but I did walk by so I managed to take a picture of this weird building.

After throwing away my lunchbox and water bottle (because yes, although we were girls only, this was our first time seeing an ice-hockey game, and we had no idea who was actually going to play while enterering the building, we looked too dangerous to take these things inside…), we found our spot and waited for the game to start. We were sitting in the ‘family corner’, and had a really nice view at the corner next to us – the hooligans!

Before the real game started, they needed a warming up...

19:00 – the game officially started, with a very spectacular entrance of all the players..!

So after seeing this, we bought a big popcorn and made ourselves as comfortable as possible on our plastic chairs - we were ready to watch the game! But suddenly all the 6324 persons present in the arena stood up. Time for the national anthem.

Finally the game started! Very hard to take good pictures since it was all going so fast. And I’m not only talking about the speed of the ice-hockey players, but also of all the things happening. Suddenly fighting, then scoring, then falling down, fighting again…

After playing 3 x 20 minutes, Djurgården unfortunately lost the game with 2-5. But one thing I can say for sure, they didn’t lost due to a lack of support coming from the hooligan side. They were screaming really all game long, and they even managed to get the rest of the crowd enthousiastic (in our family corner as wel, all dads were jumping and yelling)!

Yep, it was a fun night, and as a memory I brought the special edition of Djurgården’s magazine back home.

I’ve just been creative with my scissors so now I got 47 pictures of these 47 tough guys hanging above my bed! What a nice Christmas decoration =)

Kyss och kram,
Yoline