SAKO Rif les A Heritage of Perfection By Dan Kidder Managing Editor
C
lose to the Arctic Circle in the beautiful and friendly country of Finland, lies a company obsessed with perfection. I recently had the opportunity and privilege to be a guest of this company and tour their facilities, and I have to say I was very impressed. SAKO is an acronym for Suojeluskuntain Ase- ja Konepaja Osakeyhtiö, which translates to Firearms and Machine workshop of the Civil Guard. Located in the industrial city of Riihimäki, 45 miles to the North of the capital Helsinki, the company still operates in the factory they have occupied since 1927. The history of the company is as fascinating as the history of the country itself, and one could argue that if it were not for the events surrounding the creation of Finland, there would be no SAKO, and possibly without SAKO, there would be no Finland. The company itself was started in 1919, refurbishing old Prussian rifles given to the White Army during the 1918 Finnish Civil War. The company that would bear the name SAKO Oy was officially founded in 1921 and has been in continuous operation as a rifle company since then. During World War II the SAKO factories began full scale production of cartridges, producing 275 million between 1939 and 1944, in a small brick building that still stands in the courtyard of the Riihimäki factory complex and is now used as a conference and show room for all of their products. During the 100-day long Winter War, the top sniper in the world, Simo Häyhä, also called “The White Death” used a SAKO produced variant of the Mosin Nagant to kill between 505 and 542 Russian soldiers. He was so successful as a sniper with this rifle that the Russians put a price on his head. The staggering losses to Russia and the relatively light losses to the Finns (323,000 Soviets to only 70,000 Finns) is partly credited to the excellent quality of their rifles and the hunting tradition of their people, coupled with their knowledge of the woods and ability to ski into position, strike, and ski away. That and Sisu, which we will elaborate on in a bit.
The marriage of old and new world technology is evident at SAKO in their Riihimäki factory. It has been in continous operation since 1927 and features state of the art manufacturing as well as caves where they moved operations to avoid allied bombing during World War II.
10 February 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
