The Reindeer Hunters: A Novel by Lars Mytting
A great book, a tremendous history lesson, and an intriguing read.
Lars Mytting shows excellence in delivering a very memorable look into how little Norway went from the poorest nation in all of Europe to becoming the richest in less then half a century.
EXCERPTS:
I bought a ticket to just the next stop, but stayed on all the way to Lillehammer, and walked into Helleberg’s sporting and hunting shop, where he saw a Krag-Jørgensen. The Krag had been patented in 1894 by Colonel Krag and Gunsmith Jørgensen, and was manufactured by Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk just as the chamber charger had been, though a sea of craftsmanship and technical advancements separated the two. The Krag had attracted attention around the globe as the world’s most advanced and precise rifle, and it was Norwegian.
The projectiles were amazingly long and just 6.5 millimetres in diameter, with an muzzle velocity of an unbelievable 770 metres per second, so there was nothing on this Earth that moved faster than the bullets shot from a Krag, and it was said to be able to kill from a distance of 600 metres. All the bother of preparing the chamber charger to fire was eliminated with a little waterproof cartridge, and not just that: the Krag could take up to six cartridges at once! He had studied the mechanism closely.
On the train home he had sat in the gangway next to an old lady from Hundorp, the Krag clamped between his knees, and at each station more folk came over to take a look, all wanting to see if the magazine really flipped open as they had heard, and if the mechanism was really as smooth as everyone said, and the old woman said if they could make something that fine here in Norway, there were no limits to what the country could do when they got rid of the Swedes.
In Fritzner’s Old Norse dictionary and discovered that frjá did not necessarily mean “friend”. In an even older sense it meant “to love”.
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