World's Largest Cheese Slicer

Between the cities of Umeå and Skellefteå in Northern Sweden, right outside the tiny town of Ånäset, is where you’ll find them: two giant cheese slicers. Leaning on each other, they welcome visitors to an area known as the Kingdom of Cheese. This dairy-wonderland of a name has a lot to do with the locally famous Västerbotten Cheese, which is made only in the nearby village of Burträsk.

The cheese slicer, or cheese plane, was invented in 1925 by the Norwegian carpenter Thor Bjørklund. From there, the design, which has barely changed in a century, become widespread across Nordic countries, including Sweden.

Compared to an ordinary cheese slicer measuring about 20 cm (8 inches), these two are enormous. Rising 7 meters (23 feet) above the ground and weighing 820 kg (more than 1,800 pounds), these are by far the biggest ones in the world. Whether they have ever been used to slice any cheese is, however, unclear.