The Knife Wrestlers

In the heart of Gothenburg, Sweden, the sculpture known as The Knife Wrestlers (Bältespännarna in Swedish) is a romantic nationalist work created by Johan Peter Molin. It depicts two men engaged in a fight with knives, a dramatic reference to a mythological style of duel called spänna bälte ('to bind the belt'). The origins of this myth are unclear. The sculpture further contains elements of Nordic history, including the use of runes and verses from the Poetic Edda.

Each copy of the sculpture, which also resides in Stockholm, Vänersborg, and Hällefors, features a rectangular socket adorned with four relief images that tell a dramatic story of the fight. On three of the four sides, there are snake ornaments containing runic inscriptions. Some copies include a horizontal runic inscription at the top of the socket, taken from the Poetic Edda. Molin asked multiple scholars for help in transcribing the text in runes. The first copy known to contain the horizontal runic inscription is the version from Stockholm made in 1867.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons