by
Greg Pickersgill
Pardon me for saying this (and I say it as someone with something of an interest in Swedish helmets) but I have always thought the M26, its shell anyway, is perhaps the dullest most uninteresting and possibly actually unattractive of any helmet. Its just an undifferentiated blob. Is that descriptive enough? The M21 is a miracle of almost architectural curvilinear design by comparison, and the M37 has a subtle simplicity that is in its way quite beautiful.
I should also say that an M26 - in just as good condition (I guess very many indeed were made and most of them ended up in the Civil Defence stores) - was one of the first helmets I ever got, long long back sometime in the middle 1960s, bought by mail through an advert in the Exchange and Mart (which for younger readers was a sort of weekly Ebay on newsprint). In fact I bought five, a British Mk4, an Italian M33, French Adrian M26, the Swede, and a British paratroop helmet which cost me a fiver and for which I have since been offered quite startling sums (no, I'm not selling it). Its fascinating to know that I remember the helmets so well (actually not really as I still have them) but I have no idea whatseoever how come I, then in my mid-teens, had the money to buy them. No memory whatsoever.
That was, unfortunately, the end of my first phase of being a helmet fan, and I didn't start again until the late 1990s. Having missed out on getting all the good stuff cheap, probably, but anyway I was wasting all my money on books and records and drink instead.
Back to the helmets - I have a set of the three sizes of the M26 now, and that explains why I always thought Swedish soldiers must have small heads, as my original purchase was the smallest size. There are also a variety of different liner systems for this one, just as for the M37. Collect the set!
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