- Location
- In lalaland, that is Ottawa.
I read a lot and one of my favourite authors is a Norwegian named JO NESBRO. He writes crime novels, I have just finished The Leopard. Unfortunately Nesbro and his translator are both woefully ignorant of firearms. In this book which I have just finished, Hole uses the rifle at the end of the book.
Sly
The MarklinRifle
Frederick Selous (left) with his Marklin Rifle (right).
The Marklin (or the Märklin, as my keyboard stubbornly refuses to spell out forme) was made famous by the Norwegian crime fiction writer Jo Nesbo in his book The Redbreast. Inthe novel Nesbo featured this weapon not as a hunter's rifle, but as the weaponof an assassin. Since then it's come into some prominence among his fans andamong some amateur gun enthusiasts and people who just generally wonder, whatthe heck is this wonder rifle?
A brief search on the internet shows that therer is a lot of hearsay andwhat-have-you regarding the rifle and whether or not it actually exists.Unfortunately, the internet has far more bad information about the rifle andit's unusual history than it does accurate information.
This whole business reminds me of something I read about when I was reading upon the William Shakespeare and the conspiracytheory that he did not actually write his own plays (which, you'lltrust me on this one, is an actual belief that some people adhere to, which, tome, just goes to show that sometimes all it takes to fool a smart person isanother smart person). One of the counter-arguments to this theory is truly oneof the most elegant things I have ever read. The counter-argument claims thatthat the absence of evidence does not necessarily mean the evidence of absence.Just because you can't find something doesn't mean it didn't happen, and justbecause you can't prove something that does not mean that it is suddenly andirrecoverably dispelled.
Or that's the reading I take from that whole business.
Much of the problem with the rifle has to do with the fact that it shares itsname with a toy manufacturer. A lot of googling and yahooing and binging (haha,let's not kid ourselves) turns up nothing but toy cannons and trains orwhatever else, which murks the water. At that point I know a lot of people giveup, I know I almost did, but I can assure you, the Marklin Rifle is a very realweapon. There's more than a few elephants and men hanging out in the afterlifewho will tell you the same (I mean, you know, if you speak elephant).
The Marklin was in fact designed around the turn of the century by a cannon manufacturerlooking to branch out in sport shooting. Using the same falling blockaction design as the famous British Martini-Henry Rifle (with a significantscaling, naturally), the was very much a rifle in keeping with the late 19thcentury-- at least in terms of upscale hunting rifles. While it was hardlygroundbreaking, it was a fairly unique weapon.
The problem with the Marklin wasn't that it was a just boutique weapon (whichit was) or that it had a unique caliber (which being a 16mm makes it bizarreeven among elephant guns) or that it was a falling block weapon in the agewhere bolt-action rifles were becoming popular-- it was all of thesethings. The Marklin Rifle hit the market too little and too late. The littlecannon maker that could soon folded up its small arms division after onlyselling a small number of the weapons in the last decades of the 19th century.
In no time at all, the rifle was overshadowed by cheaper weapons with lessfussy maintainance routines and less expensive ammunition. Why spend that manykrones or marks or pounds or whatever when you could buy maybe two high-endrifles for the same price? Maybe if the rifle found a base of customers itcould have driven down the price and really made something of it, but that onlyexists where some sort of jonbar hinge dropped in and made this finicky riflesomething more than it was. That world doesn't exist, obviously and all we'releft with is a story-- unless you're an antique arms collector.
If you ask Jo Nesbo, the real market with the Marklin rifle is exclusively Neo-Nazipsychopaths (a redundancy if there ever was one), so maybe it's forthe best this rifle never took off.
Nesbo also mentions that the Marklin used a special type of bullet (beyondusing a 16,, shell). Nesbo's assertion that it uses "Singapore bullets"is true, with some minor liberties. The Marklin's 16mm bullets used "Dum Dum" rounds,which is a kind of a ball designed to expand upon impact and create larger,uglier, and rougher wounds. Dum Dum bullets are so named from a factory in the Indian townof Dum Dumthat produced soft-leaded bullets that were the predecessors to our modernhollow point bullets. This is one of the main reasons the Marklin is thought ofas such a bizarre weapon. While one can chamber any firearm with soft-lead veryfew are designed to chamber that sort of shell exclusively.
This is one of the main reasons the Marklin was destined to become nothing morethan a curio-- a stillborn one at that. The 1868 Declarationof St. Petersburg put an international ban on expanding bullets overa certain weight and the 1899 HagueConvention, reinforced the taboo on the sort of bullet that theMarklin was built for. In effect, these two treatises banned the 16mm bulletsthe Marklin required for use against God's largest and ugliest animals (manrarely being one and often the other).
Considering this, it isn't likely the Marklin ever saw much action in battle.The prohibitive price, strange ammunition, and general illegality likely keptit out of all but the most desperate hands. Besides, even back during theSecond Boer War where it might have seen combat, it would be worth more as acollectible than as an instrument of war.
With all that said, anyone who thinks that the Marklin isn't real, I'd suggestthey do an actual cursory search and then write about what they find instead ofjust giving up when they don't hit pay dirt. Unfortunately there's a lot ofthat sort of thing going on in the world. People read the first thing they seeand they just believe it at its word. Oh well, at least it gives me a chance totalk about guns and crime books and in the end, isn't that what it's all about?
Sources:
Anthony North, Ian V. Hog, (2004). Book of Guns and Gunsmiths, 2004. QuantumBooks. p. 256
Arthur Augustus Thurlow Cunynghame, M. Balkind, (1880). My Command in SouthAfrica, 1874-1878. Macmillan & Co.. p. 79.
Kirton, Jonathan: The British Falling Block Breechloading Rifle From 1865(1997), p. 97
Sly
The MarklinRifle
Frederick Selous (left) with his Marklin Rifle (right).
The Marklin (or the Märklin, as my keyboard stubbornly refuses to spell out forme) was made famous by the Norwegian crime fiction writer Jo Nesbo in his book The Redbreast. Inthe novel Nesbo featured this weapon not as a hunter's rifle, but as the weaponof an assassin. Since then it's come into some prominence among his fans andamong some amateur gun enthusiasts and people who just generally wonder, whatthe heck is this wonder rifle?
A brief search on the internet shows that therer is a lot of hearsay andwhat-have-you regarding the rifle and whether or not it actually exists.Unfortunately, the internet has far more bad information about the rifle andit's unusual history than it does accurate information.
This whole business reminds me of something I read about when I was reading upon the William Shakespeare and the conspiracytheory that he did not actually write his own plays (which, you'lltrust me on this one, is an actual belief that some people adhere to, which, tome, just goes to show that sometimes all it takes to fool a smart person isanother smart person). One of the counter-arguments to this theory is truly oneof the most elegant things I have ever read. The counter-argument claims thatthat the absence of evidence does not necessarily mean the evidence of absence.Just because you can't find something doesn't mean it didn't happen, and justbecause you can't prove something that does not mean that it is suddenly andirrecoverably dispelled.
Or that's the reading I take from that whole business.
Much of the problem with the rifle has to do with the fact that it shares itsname with a toy manufacturer. A lot of googling and yahooing and binging (haha,let's not kid ourselves) turns up nothing but toy cannons and trains orwhatever else, which murks the water. At that point I know a lot of people giveup, I know I almost did, but I can assure you, the Marklin Rifle is a very realweapon. There's more than a few elephants and men hanging out in the afterlifewho will tell you the same (I mean, you know, if you speak elephant).
The Marklin was in fact designed around the turn of the century by a cannon manufacturerlooking to branch out in sport shooting. Using the same falling blockaction design as the famous British Martini-Henry Rifle (with a significantscaling, naturally), the was very much a rifle in keeping with the late 19thcentury-- at least in terms of upscale hunting rifles. While it was hardlygroundbreaking, it was a fairly unique weapon.
The problem with the Marklin wasn't that it was a just boutique weapon (whichit was) or that it had a unique caliber (which being a 16mm makes it bizarreeven among elephant guns) or that it was a falling block weapon in the agewhere bolt-action rifles were becoming popular-- it was all of thesethings. The Marklin Rifle hit the market too little and too late. The littlecannon maker that could soon folded up its small arms division after onlyselling a small number of the weapons in the last decades of the 19th century.
In no time at all, the rifle was overshadowed by cheaper weapons with lessfussy maintainance routines and less expensive ammunition. Why spend that manykrones or marks or pounds or whatever when you could buy maybe two high-endrifles for the same price? Maybe if the rifle found a base of customers itcould have driven down the price and really made something of it, but that onlyexists where some sort of jonbar hinge dropped in and made this finicky riflesomething more than it was. That world doesn't exist, obviously and all we'releft with is a story-- unless you're an antique arms collector.
If you ask Jo Nesbo, the real market with the Marklin rifle is exclusively Neo-Nazipsychopaths (a redundancy if there ever was one), so maybe it's forthe best this rifle never took off.
Nesbo also mentions that the Marklin used a special type of bullet (beyondusing a 16,, shell). Nesbo's assertion that it uses "Singapore bullets"is true, with some minor liberties. The Marklin's 16mm bullets used "Dum Dum" rounds,which is a kind of a ball designed to expand upon impact and create larger,uglier, and rougher wounds. Dum Dum bullets are so named from a factory in the Indian townof Dum Dumthat produced soft-leaded bullets that were the predecessors to our modernhollow point bullets. This is one of the main reasons the Marklin is thought ofas such a bizarre weapon. While one can chamber any firearm with soft-lead veryfew are designed to chamber that sort of shell exclusively.
This is one of the main reasons the Marklin was destined to become nothing morethan a curio-- a stillborn one at that. The 1868 Declarationof St. Petersburg put an international ban on expanding bullets overa certain weight and the 1899 HagueConvention, reinforced the taboo on the sort of bullet that theMarklin was built for. In effect, these two treatises banned the 16mm bulletsthe Marklin required for use against God's largest and ugliest animals (manrarely being one and often the other).
Considering this, it isn't likely the Marklin ever saw much action in battle.The prohibitive price, strange ammunition, and general illegality likely keptit out of all but the most desperate hands. Besides, even back during theSecond Boer War where it might have seen combat, it would be worth more as acollectible than as an instrument of war.
With all that said, anyone who thinks that the Marklin isn't real, I'd suggestthey do an actual cursory search and then write about what they find instead ofjust giving up when they don't hit pay dirt. Unfortunately there's a lot ofthat sort of thing going on in the world. People read the first thing they seeand they just believe it at its word. Oh well, at least it gives me a chance totalk about guns and crime books and in the end, isn't that what it's all about?
Sources:
Anthony North, Ian V. Hog, (2004). Book of Guns and Gunsmiths, 2004. QuantumBooks. p. 256
Arthur Augustus Thurlow Cunynghame, M. Balkind, (1880). My Command in SouthAfrica, 1874-1878. Macmillan & Co.. p. 79.
Kirton, Jonathan: The British Falling Block Breechloading Rifle From 1865(1997), p. 97
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