European tied knot in middle of abseil (5)

I believe the answer is:

swede

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'european' is the definition.
(Swede is an example)

'tied knot in middle of abseil' is the wordplay.
'tied knot' becomes 'wed' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'middle of' indicates the central letters.
The central letters of 'abseil' are 'se'.
'wed' inserted inside 'se' is 'SWEDE'.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for swede that I've seen before include "Man from Malmo" , "plant" , "in Northern Europe" , "Scandinavian national" , "Person like Strindberg" .)

I've seen this clue in The Independent.

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