Norway: Mathildedal and Fiskars

Through an absolute deluge of rain, we stopped at these 2 towns on our way to Helsinki. Both towns started off as iron forgeries - Mathildedal in the 1850s and Fiskars in 1650s. Both towns were great historic examples of their eras and Fiskars was particularly interesting. The company 'Fiskars' which was the company that started the iron forgery all those years ago in the town of its namesake, is still running today! This makes it one of the oldest companies in the world! They're also listed on the Finnish SE. They had a lovely museum which we spent some time in. Now, we had never heard of the company Fiskars, but when we saw their most famous product, we realised that almost every family in South Africa that we know, would know this product and hence this company. They made the orange handled scissors that I think virtually every household had or still has today. We definitely had a pair! The company have sold about 1 billion of these scissors btwn 1967 and 2011. Very interesting!Read more