Something Of That Elk

They call them moose in Finland and Patrick Galbraith, having visited Sako headquarters, sets off into the icy land with a licence to shoot one

 

Usually when I fall asleep in the bath, I wake up when the water goes cold. This time, though, it was a phone call. “Shall we drive up to Primrose Hill on Saturday and wander across the heath to the pub?” It sounded like a lovely idea but I smugly declined: “Another time. I’m going to Sweden to hunt elk.”

I had been telling everyone. There is something tedious about the sort of person who bangs on about how much they are “looking forward to a day of driven pheasants in the home counties”. On the other hand, announcing that you are packing every last bit of knitwear you own because you are “off to some freezing Scandinavian outpost, in pursuit of colossal beasts” is pretty cool, or at least I thought so.

It turns out, though, that I was wrong. Wrong by some 580km in fact. “We’re going to Finland to hunt moose,” Karl Waktare, the charming managing director of GMK, corrected me, over a croissant at the airport.

This came as something of a surprise but not an altogether unpleasant one. To me, the land of the midnight sun was a much better idea. Some weeks previously, I had read a fascinating article about the oldest indigenous community in Scandinavia, the Sámi people of Lapland. This seemed a perfect opportunity to learn more.

But that evening, when we were sitting at the bar after our transfer from the airport, it transpired that there would be no learning about the Sámi. We were at the wrong end of the country. The next day, though, we were going to walk around the factory of the rifle and cartridge brand Sako and its subsidiary, Tikka, which are both imported into the UK by GMK.