Morakniv

There is a long tradition of knife making in Mora. We have been creating sharp knives for the rest of the world for more than 400 years. The seed of what would become one of the world’s most popular knife manufacturers was sown as early as 1891 when Frost-Erik Erson returned to the village of Östnor in Mora after four years of work as a lumberjack in North America. In the same year, he founded his timber sledge factory that manufactured sledges, trolleys, and knives for the workshop’s internal use. Back then, it was important to manage resources and to utilize the remaining material from the production was more or less taken for granted. It would later prove to be a successful business concept.

Shortly thereafter, knife production in the timber sledge factory took off and eventually became a sought-after replacement product for traveling farm traders who, through their travels in Sweden, spread the knives from Mora. By the turn of the century, Morakniv had become a well-established concept among craftsmen, giving ripples on the water. Within a few years, exports were established and the buyers were mainly wholesalers, gunsmiths, and iron traders in Europe. In 1904, Frosts had ten employees and made 19,000 knives annually and focused exclusively on knife manufacturing.