Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and as you can tell by my
fantastic sweater I am here in Iceland today
by generous invitation of the Southern Iceland
Shooting Association and we're taking a look at some
interesting Scandinavian Nordic firearms.
And what we have today is an Otterup 69.
Which is a sporting rifle, but it's a sporting rifle with a really interesting past.
This was manufactured by a company called Schultz & Larsen.
In American English it would be "Schultz and Larson",
in Danish it sounds like that but a lot more muddled.
Schultz & Larsen essentially starts as a gunsmithing shop around 1904.
In 1910 they hire Larsen ("lassen"), who is a very successful competitive shooter.
He would actually go on to win five Olympic shooting medals between 1912 and 1924.
And they partner up to form essentially a gun shop making really nice rifles.
This is actually kind of a story that has a lot of echoes of Accuracy International,
the combination of a talented smith and a very talented shooter working together.
Well in 1919 the company is really founded in the sense that it would go on to exist to this day,
because after the Treaty of Versailles
a lot of German firearms tooling was essentially sold for scrap.
The Germans weren't allowed to keep it, weren't allowed to use it.
And so other companies like this start-up shop in Denmark
were able to buy really good firearms tooling for essentially pennies on the dollar.
So in 1919 the shop is founded.
They would go on to manufacture a whole bunch of interesting rifles, a lot of sporting stuff.
They did some various guns that were used in World War Two,
which I actually have a video on at least one of them, which I'll link at the end of this.
And then after the war ended they turned to sporting rifles.
And what were they going to do for actions?
Because it is really expensive to make really good forged Mauser-style actions.
Well, they got leftover surplus and German K98k Mausers
and rebuilt them into competition target rifles and also hunting rifles.
So there would be several iterations of this starting in the 1950s.
There's a '52 pattern, there's a '58 pattern,
and then there's this, which is kind of the final perfected iteration which is the 1969 pattern.
And these vary in some relatively subtle ways, but essentially what we're looking at is
a German World War Two Mauser action that has been retrofitted
with a heavy barrel in usually 6.5x55m.
There were some that were also done in 7.62 NATO or .30-06.
These are also cartridges that did see some use in the Nordic countries,
but 6.5 Swedish is really the predominant calibre.
So a free-floated heavy barrel for target shooting.
The 1969 patterns added a really nice Danish-made target trigger.
The 69 patterns also introduced a brand new stock.
You can see it's sort of an exaggerated semi-pistol grip, there's a nice cheek pad on here.
Prior to this, the earlier versions used the original K98k stocks just cut down to free float the barrel.
Add on a set of nice aperture sights and
Let me show you some of those elements up close.
So these are called "Otterup" because that is the city in Denmark where Schultz & Larsen is located.
And these were used pretty extensively by Danish competition shooters.
So they were all members of various shooting clubs,
and we can see on this one a sticker for this guy's particular shooting club.
Interestingly this was the 100th anniversary of the club's existence, presumably,
so they put on a cool little commemorative sticker on the stock, which is still there today.
But obviously this was being used as a competition rifle back in the 1970s.
You can see the cheek riser here on the side.
There used to be a pad or something that has come off.
This is in exactly the condition that it was sold out of Denmark.
Not so much surplused, but the Danish shooting sports association used these,
they are kind of a standardised rifle of a lot of Danish shooting clubs.
As they were eventually replaced, they were exported to other places like Iceland.
Now here's that sort of exaggerated pistol grip that I mentioned.
Really reminiscent of guns like the Swedish CG 63 competition Mausers.
Gives you a really good grip on the gun.
The trigger in here is a Danish target trigger,
that's one of the distinctive elements of the 1969 pattern.
These were all commercial guns, so it's not like there's a really formal progression
like you would see with a lot of military standardised firearms.
But in 1969 the fancy package includes the new trigger and the new production stock.
Now some of the earlier guns were retrofitted with one or both of those elements.
So ... it's not a written in stone sort of thing, but.
Got an aperture sight, adjustments for windage and elevation.
The original German bolt handle here.
It matches itself, but it is not matched to the receiver of the rifle.
No big deal given that they were re-barrelling these things anyway,
the headspace is going to be all brand new, so a matching bolt is not really a thing.
And then the bolt handle was bent just slightly downward.
The receiver as I said is an original German World War Two Kar98k receiver.
And if you look at a hundred different Otterup rifles
you will find a hundred different makers and years of manufacture of Mauser.
So this is a really early one, this is a pre-war 1936 rifle.
... It doesn't use Waffenamts, it pre-dates the use of Waffenamts as the proof marks there.
And then there is the original serial number and side-rail designation.
But the barrel is marked 6.5x55, and on the top here Schultz & Larsen, Otterup.
The bolt action is completely unchanged, it's still a 5 round magazine.
Although Swedish stripper clips are a little bit wider than German 8mm clips,
and so the stripper clip guides on these were in fact widened out
so that they can use stripper clips in their new calibre.
One of the options available was to have a rail on the underside here for a hand stop or a sling swivel.
This particular rifle doesn't have one, but some did.
Of course the barrel is free floated. On the earlier patterns you would have
the original K98k stocks, but cut down to about this length.
And then one of the other distinctive features of the 1969 pattern guns
is that the front sight is a single piece that has been press fitted onto the barrel.
Earlier versions simply dovetailed a front sight into the barrel. This is more solid, more secure.
You've got your aperture sight insert in there,
that can be changed out to whatever the competitor prefers.
We have a couple of stickers here on the front of the gun, and this is also pretty common
to see on these as a legacy of their Danish competition use.
Robert Madsen was the guy who owned this for a while, I think this is probably his street address.
And then there are some stickers that are marked DDSG&I.
And I'm not even going to attempt the Danish, but that translates to
the Danish Shooting, Gymnastics and Sports Association.
That was the overseeing body of competition shooting in Denmark.
So stickers like this will indicate a particular match that was shot,
or an annual inspection of the rifle to make sure that it meets all of the competition rules.
I don't have any exact numbers, but quite a lot of these were made.
They are still fairly common in Denmark and a number of them,
like this one, have made their way into Iceland as well as other Nordic countries.
And they remain very popular rifles today, they are inexpensive,
high quality, Schultz & Larsen did really good work.
And some of these can be absolute tack drivers of competition rifles.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed this look at a post-war reuse of old surplus war materiel.
Thanks for watching.