(Bloomberg) -- The lakeside manor house of Sven-Göran Eriksson has hit the market for 25 million Swedish krona ($2.24 million) with Henrik Flinta at Sweden Sotheby’s International Realty. The beloved football legend died from pancreatic cancer last year at age 76.
His son, Johan Eriksson, says his father fell in love with the property on Lake Fryken in Värmland, a little more than a four-hour drive west of Stockholm, from the moment he first saw it in 2002. “We were on the lake on a steamboat in midsummer, and the captain of the boat pointed out the home to my dad and told him that it was for sale,” Johan recalls, speaking to Bloomberg News from Stockholm alongside his sister, Lina. “We managed to pull up to the house with the boat, and Dad bought it the very next day. He knew it was where he wanted to live.”
Eriksson’s high-profile coaching career included managing England’s national team in the early 2000s. Besides being the first non-British manager, the teams featured superstars such as David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, and came with lots of media attention. But when he was at his lakeside home, he could relax far away from the stresses of international football, says Johan. He spent summers at the house and as much time as he could, moving there permanently in 2019 as he retired.
“Both my sister and I thought that wasn’t going to be easy for him, that he was going to be super bored, but instead he found tranquility, peace and harmony, and really enjoyed his dream house, which was beautiful to see,” Johan says.
The property, known as Bjorkefors Manor, was featured in Sven, the 2024 Amazon Prime video documentary about Eriksson. He was filmed walking around the estate with his family and answering questions about his football career and life while at home.
The Property
Bjorkefors sits on 6-plus idyllic acres, complete with its own steamboat dock and private sandy beach. There are several detached buildings on the grounds, including a 20-year-old villa, a guest house on the lake, a pool house, a tennis court and other amenities.
The main house, which sports a white façade and red roof, was built in the late 1800s and has four bedrooms, six bathrooms and 9,000 square feet of living space across three floors. The ground level offers an open-plan kitchen, office space and living rooms. Lakeside views are maximized, especially in a separate dining area overlooking the water with sliding glass doors.
“It’s where we we would all gather and eat,” says Lina Eriksson. “Dinners were spectacular overlooking the lake, because the sun sets exactly opposite the lake behind a mountain, and the views are just gorgeous.”
The second floor houses the primary bedroom and bathroom, additional bathrooms, a library and a lounge space. The third floor has three additional bedrooms. A short walk away from the main house is the 2,700-square-foot pool house with almost 20-foot-high ceilings, a large lap pool, a sauna, a relaxation area and a gym.
“We do ice skating on the lake when it freezes over, and I do ice baths, but the indoor heated pool is a great option year-round if the Swedish summers fail to deliver,” Lina says. Her dad wanted his home to reflect his active lifestyle, and he enjoyed the outdoors, she adds. “We used to take a lot of nature walks in the woods or go running.” He even kept chickens on the grounds, she recalls. “It’s also amazing for picking mushrooms and wild blueberries and things like that.”
In addition to the main house and the pool area, there are also separate guest accommodations. One was built especially for Eriksson’s parents, and he also housed a family of Afghan refugees for several years, according to Lina. She says they have since moved out.
Beyond the great outdoors, Sven-Göran Eriksson’s children say, he loved the literary connection his house had. Selma Lagerlöf, the first female writer to win a Nobel Prize in literature, used the house as a place to work and was inspired by the surrounding landscape.
“She was from the region, and they say she did her writing in what was later Dad’s bedroom,” Johan says. Lagerlöf wrote Gösta Berling’s Saga there, and the villainous spirit of a previous resident who inspired her character Sintram was said to haunt the house. Lina and Johan say that they’ve not seen any evidence of a haunting and that it’s just a bit of fun.
Johan describes the property as an ideal place for entertaining—he got married there in 2010. “We had our ceremony on the dock, and then the same steamboat that we first saw the house on came and picked us all up, and we all had dinner on the boat.”
He also says it would make sense for a future buyer to be someone who has a large family, perhaps with different generations who all want to live together given the space and detached buildings on the estate. He also says it would be an ideal retreat for another high-profile person.
“It can be for somebody who, like in Dad’s case, had a hustle-and-bustle job and then wanted to retreat back into the serenity and the peacefulness that the house offers,” Johan says. “Dad went there as much as he could and as much as his jobs permitted him to. Toward the end, it was the only place he wanted to be.”
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