The Madsen LAR was a battle rifle

Battle rifle

A battle rifle is a military service rifle that fires a full power rifle cartridge, such as 7.62x51mm NATO. While the designation of battle rifle is usually given to post-World War II select fire infantry rifles such as the H&K G3, the FN FAL or the M14, this term can also apply to older military...

 of Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 origin chambered in the 7.62mm NATO calibre. It was made from lightweight high tensile alloys and steel similar to that used on the M16 rifle

M16 rifle

The M16 is the United States military designation for the AR-15 rifle adapted for both semi-automatic and full-automatic fire. Colt purchased the rights to the AR-15 from ArmaLite, and currently uses that designation only for semi-automatic versions of the rifle. The M16 fires the 5.56×45mm NATO...

 and its layout is based on a number of rifles such as the GRAM 63 and the Valmet M62. Development of the Madsen LAR has its traces back to 1962 when various arms manufacturers like FN Herstal and H&K

Heckler & Koch

Heckler & Koch GmbH is a German defense manufacturing company that produces various small arms. Some of their products include the SA80, MP5 submachine gun, G3 automatic rifle, the G36 assault rifle, the HK 416, the MP7 personal defense weapon, the USP series of handguns, and the high-precision...

 were producing the FN FAL

FN FAL

The Fusil Automatique Léger or FAL is a self-loading, selective fire battle rifle produced by the Belgian armaments manufacturer Fabrique Nationale de Herstal . During the Cold War it was adopted by many North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, with the notable exception of the United States...

 and G3

Heckler & Koch G3

The G3 is a 7.62mm battle rifle developed in the 1950s by the German armament manufacturer Heckler & Koch GmbH in collaboration with the Spanish state-owned design and development agency CETME ....

.

Variants

Variants of the LAR came with solid wood stocks that covered the receiver from the handguard to the buttplate, then with fixed steel tube and side/underfolding stocks. An assault rifle variant chambered in the 7.62x39mm M43 round was intended for the armed forces of Finland to purge them away from using a Soviet based design, the Valmet M62 based on the AK-47. However, Finland being a neutral country ignored this and went ahead with the Valmet M62 adopting it as their standard service rifle as it was cheaper to produce, reliable as the Madsen LAR and overall their own design.