[ Greenland Hunter's M1917 Enfield ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today by gracious
invitation of the Southern Iceland Shooting Association
taking a look at some interesting Nordic firearms.
And what we have today is a rifle more or less
from Greenland, which I think is extremely interesting.
Now I'll start by saying there's actually a lot more demand for hunting rifles
in Greenland than there is here in Iceland.
Iceland has no native [mammal] species that are suitable for hunting in the traditional sense.
... Today they have reindeer, but those were imported
relatively recently from Norway specifically for hunting.
Over in Greenland they have a lot of things like polar bears,
and there's a much more significant practical need for something like a .30-06 calibre hunting rifle.
However, Greenland is of course a very remote area.
And trading with Greenland has historically been through Denmark,
Greenland is of course a Danish possession.
And so what we have here is a Model of 1917 US rifle
that made its way into Denmark specifically as a sporterised hunting rifle.
And this was a standard pattern that was done by the Greenland Trading Company.
Essentially there's one sort of co-op/monopoly
that controls most of the commercial trade into Greenland.
So the back story on this ... rifle
is that it is a 5 digit serial number Winchester with a 1917 dated barrel,
that was actually used by the Canadian military before eventually making its way to Greenland.
Greenland used the Model of 1917 for a while.
After World War Two it continued to be used by the Danish Home Guard. Eventually surplused.
And then guns like this one, being surplused, were available on the commercial sporting market.
Now why would Greenlanders specifically want 1917 Enfield rifles?
Well, it was the rifle that was used by the Danish military,
that's their closest international connection.
It's a rifle that was familiar and trusted by the Danes.
As an interesting side note, the Danish Sirius Patrol, which is essentially
a dog-sled patrol that goes out into the far northern wastelands of [Greenland].
They carry rifles and pistols for protection against polar bears.
And their testing determined that the 1917 Enfield was about the most reliable rifle
that they could come up with for use in these very long, very lonely patrols.
So it's a rifle that's well known in Greenland and trusted,
hence it becomes the basis for sporterised hunting rifles.
Anyway probably in the '70s, maybe the 1980s even,
these rifles were brought in and they were modified to fit Greenland taste.
So let's take a look at what they changed on this, you can probably see that there's some stuff missing here.
I mentioned the very early serial number, there it is: 98,000 and change.
It's a Winchester, ... we have a "W" for Winchester, US flaming bomb,
and I think that's either a 12-17 or a 2-17 barrel date, I think that's a two and a scratch.
But either way, it's a 1917 manufactured barrel.
And then back here on the buttstock we have a Canadian
broad arrow indicating Canadian military usage.
Before eventually this rifle found its way into Danish use.
Then ultimately surplused by the Danish military
and bought up for sporterisation and shipment to Greenland.
So the big thing that was done is a change to the sights.
The 1917 Enfields originally had frankly a really fantastic aperture sight back here.
That has been completely milled off and replaced by an open U-notch sight.
Now this was typically preferred by the Greenlanders for a couple of reasons.
First off, in addition to say defence against polar bears,
these would also have been used for seal hunting from boats.
And an open notch sight like this is in many ways preferable.
Like it may not be as good on a target range, but if you're in a moving boat
trying to hit a seal, that's going to be a much easier style of sight to use.
In addition, and this is something that is interesting, you see this applied to Finnish guns sometimes,
the debate over the type of sights to put on the Valmets.
Aperture sights are much more at risk from snow and ice.
If that aperture fills up with water and freezes or fills up with snow,
it can actually be kind of difficult to clear it out and be able to use it.
An open notch sight like this is much easier to wipe clean should it get full of snow or ice.
Now we can go ahead and pop off the rear handguard, ... like so.
And you can see that what they did here was a very simple dovetail put into the top of the barrel,
and just a plain non-adjustable notch sight dovetailed in there.
These were done on a commercial basis and so some were done better than others.
This one frankly is on the not so great side of things,
there are some really sharp edges that are left here.
Some of the nicer ones will have a lot of this material all milled away,
like down to this level and nicely refinished.
This one was a much quicker like throw it on the end mill and ... just take that chunk off
to open up the line of sight for the notch sight.
And of course that new sight isn't going to correspond to the same height as the original front sight,
so a new front sight has been put in place.
The originals were dovetailed in, so this is just a simple replacement in that dovetail.
Interesting that they basically used a roll pin as the front sight.
I would assume that allows for a basic zeroing.
Start it tall and just tap it down until you get to the appropriate height.
In addition, out here as part of the sporterisation the bayonet lugs were milled off.
Not sure if that was a legal requirement.
Sometimes bayonet lugs are considered military accoutrements and restricted.
It's certainly not something that would really impact the handling of the rifle
to take off such a small amount of metal.
But on these, the bayonet lugs have been removed.
The calibre remains the same, they are still in .30-06.
That was the military cartridge used by the Danish military,
and it's a popular hunting cartridge in Denmark.
It's interesting to point out that 1917s used by the Sirius Patrol do retain their aperture sights,
but they will actually have the receiver notched out here.
Normally that's something that we see done with a shorter receiver,
say ... 8mm Mausers being converted to .30-06.
The .30-06 is such a long cartridge that they'll notch the receiver
so that you can fit the cartridge into the opening here.
You don't normally see a notched receiver on a .30-06,
because normally you're not trying to get something even longer.
But Sirius Patrol would use particularly long, heavy bullets, and that actually required notching.
So there ... are stories about these Greenland conversions
that they are in fact ex-Sirius Patrol rifles.
And if you've been around the ... surplus firearms market for any period of time
you'll recognise that stories about how something has provenance to a particularly exciting
or exotic group of course are regularly made up to increase values on things.
These guns, if there's no notch in the receiver it is definitely not a Sirius Patrol gun.
And the ... safe thing to say would be basically all of these are
surplus Danish Home Guard guns and had nothing to do with the Sirius Patrol.
Some of these of course like this one, have made their way back out of Greenland
and been re-imported into Iceland where they are really actually fairly inexpensive rifles.
But I think this is a really neat example of the full history of something
that started off as a World War One military rifle,
and sees its way through several different iterations of military use.
In this case, Canadian Army during the Great War,
transitions to Danish Army, then Danish Home Guard,
and then comes into the commercial sporting hunting field.
Lots of different rifles go through these transitions, and it's really neat to see one
from a particularly far-flung and unusual place made for a very specific purpose.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.