Maxim M/09-21

After the Finnish Civil War in 1918 which lead to Finland becoming an independent democratic Republic the new Finnish army as World War I had just ended needed a machine gun to distribute to their troops. The most obvious and easily accessible way of Finland obtaining machine guns for its troops was to use Russian PM M1910 Maxim machine guns captured during the civil war.[1] However the wheeled mount the machine guns used were unsuited to Finnish terrain which was mainly forests.[1] Finland then decided to make their own maxim variant more suited to the Finnish terrain by developing a tripod which would be ready for production in 1921 which was similar to the one on the MG 09 machine gun which was the commercial version of the MG 08 machine gun and then mount a Russian Maxim machine gun on it which it had used successfully during the civil war to make the maxim M/09-21.[1][3]

Rear of Maxim M/09-21 machine gun.

The Maxim M/09-21 machine gun had Finnish modifications from the original Russian Maxim changing the sight to a simpler Finnish one and changing the sight measurements to the metric system.[1] The two front legs of the tripod had metal carrying handles on the front each of them.[1] Modifications were also done for manufacturing.[1] The tripod mount could also fold for easier carrying[1]