Ake Nordin, the founder of Fjallraven, was a ski instructor and avid outdoorsman. He often visited Stockholm, where he saw that back pain was increasing among Swedish students. After reading about the problem, Ake decided to create his own backpack, and named it after the Swedish word "kanka", meaning "lug something around".
Kanken bag
When Ake first introduced his bag, he planned to sell a few hundred in the first year. After his brother-in-law, Nalle, wrote an article about the new backpack, it was published in Sweden. He also arranged for a small US distributor to introduce the bag to stores in the US.