His congenital haemophilia meant that Ivar Arosenius was robbed of one of childhood’s greatest privileges - fearlessness in the face of death. From his youngest years, he was obliged to remain calm and still, to avoid contracting wounds and bleeding fatally. This enforced physical passivity also meant that he could get extremely angry with his illness.

Arosenius read everything that he could get hold of: fairytales, history books, poetry. He also began to draw and paint from an early age. Many of these pictures from his childhood depict fights and battles. The present drawing is an example of adventures the that were out of reach for him. At the National Museum in Stockholm there are some small cut-out paper figures that Arosenius created in parallel with his early drawings.

Arosenius frequently dates his works incorrectly and this is likely to be one such case, where the work would have been made earlier than the dating of "96" indicates.