HÅG began in 1943 and has spent more than eight decades on one stubborn question: why should sitting mean keeping still? The company's answer is a chair that moves with you. In 1958 HÅG moved to Røros, a historic mining town high in the mountains of central Norway, and the town has been the brand's home ever since. Some Røros families have worked there across generations; one long-serving employee recalls his father joining HÅG in Oslo in 1947, following the company north and staying for 46 years.

The turning point came in the 1970s, when HÅG, then led by chief executive Torgeir Mjør Grimsrud, began working with Norwegian designer Peter Opsvik. At a time when office chairs were built to hold the body in place, Opsvik argued the opposite: people want to move, and a good chair should let them. That idea became the brand's philosophy of dynamic, active sitting. In 1984 it produced the HÅG Capisco, a saddle-seated chair inspired by the posture of horse riders, which lets you sit forwards, backwards, sideways or perch almost standing. Forty years on it remains the brand's best-known design, and has even appeared on the sets of science fiction series such as Star Trek and The Expanse.

Every HÅG chair is built around HÅG inBalance, a balanced movement mechanism that follows the body as it tilts and shifts, without the sitter reaching for levers. The brand says its chairs hide their technical workings on purpose, aiming for seating that feels warmer and more human than the machine-like task chairs that crowded the market in the early 2000s. That thinking shaped the award-winning HÅG Futu of 2008 and HÅG SoFi of 2013, and continues in newer designs such as HÅG Tion.

Since 2007 HÅG has been part of the group now called Flokk, a Norwegian-born family of workplace furniture brands that also includes Giroflex, RH and Offecct. HÅG has long set the pace on sustainability within the group, from recycled materials to chairs designed to be taken apart and repaired. For an Australian workplace, HÅG offers something rare: Scandinavian seating with a clear point of view, made in a small Norwegian mountain town by people who believe the best posture is always the next one.