Inaugurated in Helsinki in 1925, this is the oldest annual international athletics dual match between national teams - and this weekend, from August 4 to 5, it will be Stockholm’s turn to host what will be the 81^st version of the men’s event and 66^th of the women’s.

Speaking as an English person with a football background, the closest sporting equivalent I can summon up in terms of expressing how both nations feel about this impending athletics event is the enduring rivalry - to put it nicely - between the England and Scotland football teams.

We England followers know the key markers of this old series. Denis Law deliberately playing golf on the day an England side containing his Manchester United team mates Bobby Charlton and Nobby Stiles took on West Germany in the 1966 World Cup final.

"I was playing golf in Manchester," he explained to 1995 BBC documentary Kicking and Screaming.

"And unlike Manchester it was raining," he said, deadpan, adding: "And the guy I was playing with was awful. And he beat me."

As he came back in to the clubhouse the members therein held up four fingers to let him know how many England had scored.

"As I turned the corner at the course," Law continued, "they were all at the window and of course, England had won 4-2.

"I thought it was the end of the world."

A year later Scotland beat England 3-2 at Wembley - albeit an England team with Jack Charlton walking wounded having broken his toe, adds the home commentator - and their fans rampaged over the pitch, taking turf for souvenirs of what was seen north of the border as an effective takeover of the title of world champions.

A year later, as he led his England players from Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport ahead of the 1968 match at Hampden Park, Sir Alf Ramsey responded to a reporter’s greeting “Welcome to Scotland” with the words “You must be fucking joking.”

As the lyrics go in Leader of the Pack: "You get the picture?" ("Yes, we see.")

Anyway, back to the Finn/Swede Battle.

The event is organised in the same fashion as the European Cup, latterly the European Athletics Team Championships - it is a team competition decided by points, with each event awarding seven points to the winner, and then 5-4-3-2-1 for the next five places.

So far, Finland has won the men’s match 46 times to Sweden’s 34 victories, and the Swedish women lead the Finnish women 40-25.

It is reported that there will be a new element to the women’s competition this year in that the 10,000 metres has been replaced by Tjejmilen - once the largest women-only 10km road race. So the three Finnish and three Swedish selected athletes will take part accompanied by around 8,000 other women, albeit that there will be several staggered group starts in line with COVID-19 safety protocol.

Down the years, many of the world’s most famous athletes have contributed to this private event.

For example, the men’s 800m meeting record of 1min 44.5sec was set in 1972 by Pekka Vasala, who won the Olympic 1500m title in Munich that same year.

Unsurprisingly the men’s 5,000m record is held by Finland’s Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m champion of 1972 and 1976, Lasse Viren, who recorded 13:32.0, also in 1972.

Two years later Sweden’s Anders Gärderud won the men’s 3,000m steeplechase in 8:20.8; two years after that he took the Olympic title in Montreal.

Gärderud's compatriot Stefan Holm, the Athens 2004 Olympic champion, set the high jump record of 2.35 metres that same year.

Two of Sweden’s current Olympic champions - discus thrower Daniel Ståhl and pole-vaulter Mondo Duplantis - also figure in the all-time men’s list with respective efforts of 69.42m and 6.00m, both in 2019.

Sweden's 2005 world high jump champion Kajsa Bergqvist set a record of 2.01m in 2002. 

Seppo Räty, Finland’s men’s world javelin champion of 1987, set a meeting record three years later of 89.36m, while in the 10,000 meres race walk (track) the best mark of 38min 3.95sec stands to Sweden’s Perseus Karlström, the 2019 world 20-kilometre walk bronze medallists.

Two years earlier Karlström in Stockholm won the event virtually as he pleased - and his 60-year-old mother, Siw Karlstrom, the 1986 European 10km race walk bronze medallist, competed in the women’s 5,000m race walk and finished fifth in a race won by Finland’s Elisa Neuvonen.

In 2012 one of Sweden’s most revered athletes, Carolina Klüft, the Athens 2004 Olympic and three-time world heptathlon champion, chose this meeting as her final one before retirement, and ran the third leg for the Swedish team that earned victory in the women’s 4x400 metres.

As A Lennart Julin wrote at the time: "In nine matches (missed ’06 and ’09 to injuries) she competed in various combinations of six individual events (100m, 200m, 100m Hurdles, High Jump, Long Jump, Triple Jump) and two relays for an incredible total of 34 starts (i.e. averaging almost four events per match!) resulting in 19 event wins (8 in Long Jump, 2 in 100m, 2 in Triple Jump, 1 in High Jump, 5 in 4x100m and 1 in 4x400m)! There will never be another Carolina Klüft!"

Meanwhile Chris Turner of World Athletics, the self-styled "madfinnglishman", recently tweeted that in the earliest days of this event, these two Nordic neighbours were among the most powerful athletics nations in the world, and a sense of mutual affection was conspicuously lacking right from the off.

"After the 1931 match which witnessed a fist fight in the 800 metres, the competition was not held again until 1939," Turner writes.

At the banquet after the games, the new chairman of the Finnish Athletics Federation and future president of Finland, Urho Kekkonen, announced that Finland would no longer take part in the event.

The tension was in a large part caused by Swedish attempts, spearheaded by Sigfrid Edström, the Swedish President of what was then known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation, and vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, to have Paavo Nurmi declared a professional athlete and thus banned from international competitions.

After Kekkonen's speech Swedish efforts intensified, and Nurmi was indeed banned from the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Turner was present in Helsinki in 1992 to witness what was, perhaps, the quintessential event in this time-honoured contest, when the men’s 1500m race was so rough that all six runners - three from Sweden, three from Finland - were disqualified.

"It was an extremely slow tactical race as most are at the Finland versus Sweden match," Turner told insidethegames.

"Basically there was a tremendous amount of blocking and cutting in by all athletes, 'impeding' in every sense of that word. But very rough. There was no option but to DQ everyone - it was that much of a mess."

Shocking, of course. But also rather wonderful. Eyes peeled this weekend…