In the town of Mora, a long tradition of making Fixed-blade knives has endured for centuries. For more than 400 years, we have been crafting sharp blades for the rest of the world.

Knife production in the wooden sledge factory has cutlery took off to become a sought-after replacement product among travelling merchants who, through their journeys across Sweden, spread Mora knives. At the turn of the century, Morakniv had become a well-established concept among craftsmen, causing a stir worldwide.

Within just a few years, exports had been established, and buyers were mainly wholesalers, gunsmiths and iron merchants in Europe.

In 1904, Frosts employed ten people and produced 19 000 knives per year, focusing exclusively on knife manufacturing.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Morakniv consolidated and strengthened its position worldwide, which also justified adding “Sweden” to the blade stamp. At the time, several knife manufacturers were active in the village and competed with one another in some way, which led to development for an expanding market throughout the world.

The typical stained red handle dates from this period, and over time became a distinctive feature of Östnor knives. Originally, the handle was made from untreated ordinary birch, offcuts from wooden sledge production.

Later, curly Masur birch became the obvious material for more expensive knives, but when curly Masur birch became scarce, they returned to ordinary birch and, to make it resemble mahogany, the handles were stained a reddish colour before being varnished.

As production increased, staining was abandoned and the handles were instead painted a dark red colour, which eventually appeared in many different shades over the years.