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From the collection of the Danish Resistance Museum comes this amazing poster made just after the post-WWII Liberation.

Translation:

“The machine gun: Making STEN-Gun. The working drawings are exported and sent to several companies that each performed their part. Only 5 trusted men knew and worked at the ASSEMBLY SITE!!”

At least three Danish resistance groups (Ringen, BOPA, and Holder-Danske) were known to have manufactured Sten locally, with each giving the gun its own little tweaks, largely due to the materials available. Plumbers and bicycle shop owners proved particularly adept.

They had a wild collection of differences, with each group setting up a thriving cottage industry, in many cases only dependent on the magazines (originals dropped from England or Suomi magazines smuggled from Sweden).

As detailed by the SADJ:

There were several variations of the Sten made by the different resistance organizations, of available materials. Producing barrels was a problem, largely solved by boring and re-rifling old rifle barrels. One Danish Sten copy was designed to use Suomi magazines. The Ringen Sten was a Danish design produced in small workshops using a number of aluminum castings.

Of course, there were some weapons dropped to the Danes via the efforts of the SOE and Free Danish forces in London.

The assorted Danish Resistance groups counted some 90,110 members during the war, and while most of these were involved in passive resistance and intelligence gathering, they were very active when it came to rubbing out collaborators and informers, with Likvidering (liquidation) units assassinated upwards of 400 alone in 1943-1944 ala Flame & Citron.

The Resistance also helped spirit over 7,000 Danish Jews out of the country to nearby Sweden, helped hide Danish police and military personnel, ratline downed Allied aircrews back to Freedom, and kept British intelligence very well informed of German movements.

It was only after August 1944 (!) that the British SOE began dropping weapons to the Danes, totaling just 600 tons of munitions and supplies by March 1945, and followed that up with 53 SOE agents.

And when the order to take back the country came in May 1945, most areas of Denmark were self-liberated. The now in the open Resistance, wearing identification armbands, typically met the British as they arrived, the situation already in hand and, in many cases, the local German garrisons isolated and waiting to hand over their guns.

At least 850 members of the Danish Resistance would perish in the war, with 102 of those executed.

However, no one doubts that a few STENs haven’t been set back for a rainy day in Danish communities. They often show up at police stations, are found in attics, and handed quietly down with grandpa’s old things.