The Kag-Petersson rifle was the first repeating rifle adopted by the armed forces of Norway, and one of the first repeating arms adopted anywhere in the world. The mechanism was developed by Ole Herman Johannes Krag, with vital help from his friend Axel Petersson on the actuation of the mechanism. The weapon was chambered for the 4 "linjers" (12.17 mm / 0.48") rimfire ammunition already in use in the Remington M1867 rifles allready in use in the norwegian and swedish armed forces. It was adopted as a standard arm in the Royal Norwegian Navy in 1876.
The Krag-Petersson repeating rifle has a falling block action actuated by the operation of the exterior hammer, as opposed to his earlier designs using a side mounted lever to operate the breach block. The tubular magazine, containing a total of 10 rounds, was placed under the barrel. Once the mechanism was open, an extractor ejected the spendt cartridge. A fresh round was pushed into a shaped recess on top of the falling block, wherupon the falling block raised slightly. The round could now be pushed into the chamber by the shooter, and the breachblock raised completly. The weapon was now ready to fire.
The powerfull spring pushing the breachblock up could catch the shooter off guard, resulting in pinched skin on the thumb.
During development, it was found that the rifle not only was solidly designed and well engineered, but it was also capabel of firering 18 to 19 aimed shots a minute when used as a single loader - well in advance of the standard Remington M1867s 13 aimed shoots a minute. When used as a magazine loader, it was found that 11 shoots - ten in the magazine and one in the chamber - could be fired in 25 seconds. Accurancy was also claimed to be very good with the Krag-Petersson, allthought no statistical proof has been found. Despite this, it was decided not to adopt the weapon for neither the norwegian nor swedish army, since it the ammunition it was designed around could rightly be considered outdated by the mid 1870's. The Royal Norwegian Navy on the other hand, still using old M1860 'Kammerlader' ('chamber-loader') modified to fire the 12.17 mm rimfire round, adopted it in 1876.
A total of 975 Krag-Petersson repeating rifles were produced and issued for use. By 1900 they were considered obsolete and sold off to civilians. Only a few remains in their original form today.