Armament Overview: M1898 Krag–Jørgensen Rifle

This is the Model 1898 Krag–Jørgensen Rifle, chambered in the .30-40 Krag cartridge. Adopted by the U.S. Army in 1898, it was most famously issued to Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. Its most unusual feature is the side-mounted integral magazine that holds 5 rounds, but we'll get to that in a minute.

This rifle has been highly prized by bolt-action loving sportsmen since its introduction due to its incredibly smooth and pleasant action. That popularity means that the vast majority of these rifles have been modified for sporting use, generally having the barrel and stock both cut much shorter to reduce weight. An unmodified Krag is nearly impossible to find, so this one has unfortunately been modified into a hunter's carbine.

This particular rifle was produced by Springfield Armory for the U.S. Army sometime between 1898 and 1901. It was designed by two Norwegians named Ole Herman Johannes Krag and Erik Jørgensen, and was eventually adopted as a military rifle by Denmark, Norway, and the United States. Another of its unusual features is a magazine cutoff switch, visible at right in this photograph; when the switch is flipped up, the magazine will no longer feed rounds into the action, and the user can operate the rifle as a single-shot while keeping the magazine in reserve. This feature was also present on the later Springfield M1903 bolt-action rifle that replaced the Krag in 1903 and served until the end of the second world war.

The buttplate is normal for the period, with a space for a cleaning kit within the stock secured behind a spring-loaded door in the buttplate. These rifles remained in use by Denmark and Norway until the end of the second world war in 1945, and a few were manufactured by Nazi Germany after they occupied Norway in 1940. However, production for the Nazis was extremely limited and slow due to worker delays and sabotage.

This particular rifle has been shortened by a sportsman at some point in the last century, and its original front sight was replaced with a front sight assembly from a Mauser rifle.

Starting at the top of the receiver, the side-slung magazine box is visible, along with a much more usual flag-style safety on the bolt that is still in use on many bolt actions today. The magazine is hinged at the bottom, which is a feature of American and Norwegian rifles; Danish rifles were hinged at the front, instead.

The rear sight has a scale marked in hundred-feet on top (from 700 to 1800 feet), and the sight is held in place by a simple set-screw. Most other bolt-action rifles during this period (and later rifles like the AK-47) used a spring-loaded squeeze tab to secure the rear sight instead. This sight is also "backwards" from the usual rear sight arrangement; normally, the sight is hinged at the end closer to the muzzle and the sight notch is closer to the shooter, while this one is the opposite.

The sight also has marks in hundred-yards on the side. 600 yards is 1800 feet, so the marks match up.

Many of these old ladder sights also flip up to allow greater ranges to be sighted in, but the effectiveness of the rifle at these ranges is questionable. When flipped up, the scale is now graduated in hundred-yards rather than hundred-feet, so the scale that goes from 700 to 1800 feet when laying down now goes from 700 to 1800 yards. At 1800 yards, the rifle is angled so that the bullet is traveling in a very significant parabolic arc and has lost much of its energy, and hitting a target smaller than an entire camp at that range would have been very difficult.

With the bolt open, astute observers will notice that there is no hole for the cartridges to be fed from the bottom. That's because the cartridges are pushed under the action, up, and sideways into the action from the left side. It's a sort of quasi-rotary action and it is unique to this rifle.

With the magazine open, you can see the spring-loaded lever (called a follower) that pushes the cartridges along the magazine track and into the rifle.

Here is the hole through which cartridges are fed into the action. One advantage of this system is that cartridges didn't have to be fed into the magazine individually; a soldier could simply grab a handful of cartridges and drop them into the box without even having to open the bolt, and as long as they were all pointing forward, the magazine would feed them all properly when it was closed.

The bolt is held in by a pin that's part of the extractor. The extractor itself is fairly normal, except for the fact that it runs the length of the bolt as a separate component rather than being integrated like most other rifles.

To field-strip the action for cleaning, all you have to do is pry the extractor upward with your finger to get that pin out of the slot that stops it on the receiver...

...and then turn the bolt further to the left, at which point it unlocks itself and slides right out of the rifle. To put the action back together, the bolt is simply turned to the right and it effectively re-assembles itself.

This is the receiver with the bolt out. The receiver is actually fairly simple, considering the convoluted path that the rounds have to take before they're fed into the action.

With the box closed and the bolt out, you can see the top of the follower (the spring loaded lever arm that pushes the cartridges) through the hole in the left side of the receiver.

And here's the bolt, showing the hinged extractor bar that holds the bolt in the rifle.

I hope you enjoyed this look at one of history's mostly-forgotten small arms. The turn of the 20th century was a time of intense experimentation in weapons design, and many highly unusual actions and weapons were developed at that time, including some (the Mauser action, for example) that still dominate today.