The Commission discovered that the design of a firearm is just as apt to be dictated by the ammunition available for it as any other important factor.  Compared with linen cartridges used in the Swedish and Norwegian kammerlader and in the needle-fire rifles of Germany, France and Italy, metallic cartridges were considerably more expensive and technologically challenging to manufacture.  However, they were inarguably more robust and considerably more well-suited to military employment.  Further, the Commission found that locally manufactured ammunition functioned poorly across its trials while foreign-manufactured ammunition performed almost flawlessly.  In this regard, considerations of effectiveness prevailed over those of economy.  The Commission’s first decision was the recommendation of a copper-cased metallic cartridge.  But because of manufacturing limitations, it would be a rim-fire cartridge similar to that adopted for Switzerland’s M1867 Series Swiss Millbank-Amsler conversions and carried over by the Swiss to their M1867 Swiss Peabodys.  But what caliber?

   Nominally, both the 12,000 Norwegian and the 30,000 Swedish kammerlader and percussion rifles then in service and candidates for conversion were .50 caliber, but they differed slightly.  This posed a potential problem and the Norwegians considered that they might have to rebarrel their stock of existing “4 line” rifles to convert them, an expensive proposition.  However, the Commission conducted extensive tests and discovered that the adoption of a bore with a diameter of 4.1 Swedish “lines” equaling 3.88 Norwegian “lines” thus being 12.17 mm, coupled with the utilization of a bullet with a diameter of 12.615 mm, would render acceptable accuracy in most all of the rifles of both countries.  While less than optimal for Norway, the compromise was acceptable and economically advantageous to both countries.

   The Commission considered an enormous variety of rifles, both entering service around the world and home-grown potential replacements.  Despite a serious look at local offerings and at European choices, the Commission narrowed their own considerations down to two single shot breechloaders and two repeating breechloaders, all of them American.  The Commission would have liked to have recommended a repeater, but the only viable possibilities at the time were the American Spencer and the Henry.  Both, however, were complicated, expensive and comparatively low powered.  And while it may surprise modern readers who have lived for several generations in the thick of technology, the half-dozen army officers on the board felt that the training required for their soldiers to become proficient not only in the use, but in the care of either of these repeaters, outweighed their advantages.  So for a variety of reasons the repeaters were rejected.  This left in contention the Peabody and the Remington.

   The Remington rifle most likely to have been utilized in the Norway-Swedish trials was most probably the Vienna (Wein) type trials model, which itself would shortly thereafter go into production as the M1868 Egyptian Remington model.  Peabody offered a version of its M1866 Canadian Peabody model, already chambered in a nominal .50 caliber.  The Commission was favorably impressed with both rifles and the decision could have gone either way.  Both rifles shot equally well, both weighed about the same and both had relatively high rates of fire with the Remington, for unknown reasons, slightly edging out the Peabody despite slower extraction.  Considering that human nature is to make decisions emotionally and to thereafter justify them, it seems that the Commission recommended the Remington over the Peabody because it was believed to be stronger and more robust with its fewer parts (25) when compared to the Peabody’s 37 parts.  It could not have hurt Remington’s position that neighboring Denmark, to which Norway had been joined and with which Sweden has had close ties, also adopted its nearly identical M1867 Danish Remington earlier that year with which to entirely replace its long arms. 

Between 1906 and 1913, the Norwegian government sold off virtually all of their remaining stocks of m/1867 rifles to its citizenry, disposing of over 30,000 rifles during this period.  Thus, there never were great caches of surplus Norwegian rolling blocks for arms dealers to later import into the US, making this rifle relatively rare in North America.  By the same token, neither were there concentrated stores of arms for the Nazis to destroy during WWII as they did with the M1884 Norwegian Jarmanns.  Although many rifles in civilian hands were sporterized early in the last century, those that were not are often found in pristine condition.