Founder John G. Jansson | Colours blue, yellow, red | |
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Nickname Stockholms stolthet ("The pride of Stockholm") Founded 12 March 1891, Djurgården, Stockholm, Sweden | ||
Djurg rdens if s songen 2016 highlights
Djurgårdens Idrottsförening, usually shortened as Djurgårdens IF – commonly known as Djurgården ([ˈjʉːr.ˈɡoːɖɛn] or informally Djurgår'n [ˈjʉː(r)ɡɔɳ]); abbreviated as DIF ([diːf]) – is a Swedish sports club with several departments, located in Stockholm. The club is named after the island Djurgården in the city, which originally was a Royal Hunting Park. A direct translation would be “Deergarden” or “Animalgarden”. The word “Djur” means animal but has the same derivation as the word “Deer”. “Idrottsförening” means “Sports Club” or “Sports Association”.
Contents
History
The club was founded in 1891 by a group of young athletes living on the island Djurgården in central Stockholm. Most of the founders were from the working class, and Djurgården maintained that profile for most of its early history, in sharp contrast with middle class rivals AIK. With an original focus on winter sports and athletics, the club quickly branched into other sports, becoming one of Sweden's most successful sports clubs of the 20th and 21st century. The club started playing association football in 1899 and soon started a derby rivalry with neighbouring club AIK, the so-called tvillingderbyt.
Today the most popular sections are ice hockey and football, with 16 and 11 Swedish national championship titles respectively. Other popular sections are bandy, handball and floorball. The club has won 437 Swedish championships through 2016.
Logo and colours
The first logo of the club was a four pointed silver star in saltire, which had a shield on it with the letters DIF. This star pre-dates the similar star which Idrottsföreningen Kamraterna adopted and is using to this day. The present logo in the form of a shield in yellow, red and blue with the text D.I.F. was adopted in 1896. According to an often quoted poem by Johan af Klercker from 1908, blue and yellow stand for Sweden and red stands for love. Blue and yellow are also the colours of Stockholm.
Yellow, red and blue are the club colours. The logo is registered as a trademark and the colours are set to Pantone, CMYK and web colour values. In many sports – among them football, bandy and handball – the home jersey of the team is vertically striped in light and dark blue. Because of this, blue is usually seen as the most important of the three colours. The ice hockey team uses jerseys in one blue shade with yellow and red details.
Departments
Djurgårdens IF has a number of member departments, all of which legally are their own clubs with their own financial and sporting responsibilities but share the common name, logo and values and support each other.
Major departments
Other departments
Former department
Previously, Djurgårdens IF had departments in other sports. One of these was ski jumping and DIF was one of the best clubs in Sweden in this sport for fifty years.
Fans and fan culture
Djurgården is one of the most supported clubs in Sweden, with most of its supporters living in Stockholm and the neighbouring suburbs. While other Stockholm clubs have profiled themselves as belonging to a certain borough of Stockholm, Djurgården is seen as more of a pan-Stockholm club. No reliable research exists about the spread of Djurgården supporters, but a 2015 T-shirt campaign suggests that supporters are spread fairly evenly throughout the Stockholm area.
In 1981 the main supporter club "Blue Saints" was formed, but due to its notorious fans and their bad reputation, the supporter club changed its name to Järnkaminerna, literally "The Iron Furnices" (an old nickname for Djurgården from the 1950s). Since 2005, Fabriken is Djurgården's TIFO group; they have two ultras groups: UCS (Ultra caos Stockholm) and Ultras Sthlm.
Djurgården is probably one of a few clubs in the world who is represented both in space (by Christer Fuglesang) and in the Himalayas (by Raul Helander).
Through the years, many types of souvenirs and memorabilia has been made for the club. Stuffed toys in the form of a rabbit called Järnkanin ("Iron Rabbit") are sold, the name a pun on the word Järnkamin.
Club beers
A couple of beers have been created over the years. At present, Alberget 4A is sold for Djurgårdens IF. It is named for the address of the café where the club was founded. The beer was launched in 2013 and is sold through Djurgårdshjälpen, a supporter initiative to raise money for the sports club. Originally, the beer was called Alltid oavsett ("always, no matter what"), which is a slogan often used by supporters of Djurgårdens IF. The beer is a pale lager of 5.0% abv made by Grebbestad Bryggeri on behalf of Djurgårdshjälpen and is not part of Grebbestad Bryggeri's own range of beers.
Famous Djurgården supporters
Organisations in close cooperation
The following non-profit organisations are independent but has a close official cooperation with Djurgårdens IF: