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Work began designing the cemetery in 1917 on land that had been old gravel quarries that were overgrown with pine trees and was completed three years later.

Cemeteries during this time were considered “Gardens of the Dead”. The city's cemetery committee had a desire to move away from this ideal and selected two young Swedish architects, Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz, to instead create a cemetery centred on the underlying landscape. The aim was to create something special, a cemetery blending nature and architecture into a seamless whole.

Today, Skogskyrkogården is considered one of the most important creations of modern architecture, and in 1994 it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.