The Swedish infantry musket, or the Swedish Land Pattern Musket, was a

muzzle-loaded A muzzleloader is any firearm into which the projectile and the propellant charge is loaded from the muzzle of the gun (i.e., from the forward, open end of the gun's barrel). This is distinct from the modern (higher tech and harder to make) desi ...

0.63 (16.002 mm) to 0.81 (20.7 mm)-inch calibre

smoothbore A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars. History Early firearms had smoothly bored barrels that fired projectiles without s ...

long gun A long gun is a category of firearms with long barrels. In small arms, a ''long gun'' or longarm is generally designed to be held by both hands and braced against the shoulder, in contrast to a handgun, which can be fired being held with a singl ...

. These weapons were in service within the Royal Swedish Army from the mid-16th century until the mid-19th century.

History

At the end of the 16th century, the Swedish military

musket A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket graduall ...

became a style-setter. Its style remained the same until about 1660 in most armies. In Sweden, its basic style lasted for many years—until the end of the 1680s. The

matchlock A matchlock or firelock is a historical type of firearm wherein the gunpowder is ignited by a burning piece of rope that is touched to the gunpowder by a mechanism that the musketeer activates by pulling a lever or trigger with his finger. Befo ...

was the dominant mechanism on the Swedish Army soldiers' muskets as well as among other European armed forces, and remained so until the latter half of the 1600s when the snaphaunce mechanism increasingly took over. But it was not until the

flintlock mechanism The flintlock mechanism is a type of lock used on muskets, rifles, and pistols from the early 17th to the mid-19th century. It is commonly referred to as a " flintlock" (without the word ''mechanism''), though that term is also commonly used for ...

as well as the bayonet had taken hold in earnest—around the turn of the 17th–18th centuries—that the matchlock became completely obsolete among the various squadrons within the

Swedish Empire The Swedish Empire was a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region during the 17th and early 18th centuries ( sv, Stormaktstiden, "the Era of Great Power"). The beginning of the empire is usually t ...

. However, some weapons equipped with wheellock mechanism were primarily reserved for the cavalry. The Swedish, purely warlike musket design remained in its basic form from Model 1696 until Model 1775. Before that, long guns – military as well as civilian – were produced in a variety of designs.

Clear variants

Model 1673

Model 1688

Matchlock Musket M1688
Snaphaunce Musket M1688

Model 1690

Model 1696

The flintlock carbine M1696 was the first bayonet-equipped.

Model 1704

Model 1716

Model 1725

Model 1738

Model 1762

''Krävan'' with the ''krävan''-fitting was abandoned in favour of a third scouring stick-pipe, where a ramrod (now made of

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in ...

) instead rested and a fourth scouring stick-pipe (all now in brass) next to the chamber. And the

stock In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...

was equipped with a nose cap, also in

brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other wit ...

Model 1775

With the manufacturing of the 1775 model, the pins holding the barrel in place were abandoned in favour of two scouring stick-pipe-bands with associated ''kräkor'' and a front barrel band nose cap with bow-shaped front sights in brass infused.Swedish Army Museum
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Model 1784

Model 1791

Model 1805

Model 1815

Model 1840

Model 1848

External links

Swedish Army MuseumForum for Living HistorySwedish Ingermanland National Association (in Swedish)

References

Muskets