There is another amusing family story about these rifles. When my father, Erik, was about 10 years old, he was taken back to Oslo, Norway, for the Christmas holidays. This would have been in the mid-1930s, before the war started (Norway was occupied by the Germans during the war).
At that time my father's grandfather (also Erik) was still alive, a very tall man with white hair, including a prominent handlebar mustache. He would have been about 80 at the time. Here's a photo from an oil portrait of him when he was a young man (born 1855; d. 1940).
One day my father was left with his grandfather Erik while the other adults went out for the afternoon. My father recalled of that day that Grampa Erik, who perhaps had a trace of what we now call dementia but what was then thought of as senility, produced an old rifle and some powder and ball. My dad, all amazement and anticipation, followed his grandfather out onto the second-floor balcony of the big old family house on Oslo Fjord. From there they proceeded to fire off round after round out into the fjord amid loud bangs and clouds of black powder smoke. Dad was having the best Christmas ever!
Eventually the other adults returned and quickly put an end to this Wild West show. But to my father's astonishment, it was he, the 10-year-old boy, who was soundly chastised for allowing Grampa to get into the rifles and fire them off the balcony. :lol:
Cool mustache, though.
