A blue cross on a white field that many Finns read as their lakes and their snow, adopted in 1918, shortly after independence.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
CivilFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.YesIt carries the coat of arms on the cloth.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a rectangular field with an 11:18 ratio, white, with a blue Nordic cross shifted towards the flagpole.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
Every date in its story, at a glance.
Finland was part of Sweden for centuries and, from 1809, a grand duchy inside the Russian Empire
A yacht club in Helsinki was already sailing with a blue cross on white from 1861
Finland became independent in December 1917 and a civil war immediately broke out between…
When the war ended, red recalled the defeated too much, and on 29 May 1918 a law chose the blue…
A 1978 law fixes the exact tone and the measurements
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Finland is white with a blue cross. It is a Nordic cross, shifted towards the flagpole like those of its Nordic neighbours. Many Finns see it as a portrait of their country: the snow of winter and the blue of their lakes.
Finland was part of Sweden for centuries and, from 1809, a grand duchy inside the Russian Empire. In the mid-19th century the question of what flag it should have began to be discussed. A yacht club in Helsinki was already sailing with a blue cross on white from 1861. The proposal to make blue and white the colours of the country is attributed to the writer Zacharias Topelius.
Finland became independent in December 1917 and a civil war immediately broke out between the ‘Whites’, the government, and the ‘Reds’, the revolutionaries. Meanwhile red and yellow provisional flags were used. When the war ended, red recalled the defeated too much, and on 29 May 1918 a law chose the blue cross on white. The final design was prepared by the artists Eero Snellman and Bruno Tuukkanen.
The blue cross has not changed since 1918; only the tone has been darkened.
1918
During the civil war the government provisionally uses a red flag with a yellow cross for its ships.
1918-1920
First blue cross flag, with a lighter blue than today’s.
1920
The blue is darkened. A 1978 law fixes the exact tone and the measurements.
The law does not explain the colours, but there is a reading almost everybody knows:
White
the snow that covers the country in winter.
Blue
the lakes and the sky. Finland has 187,888 lakes of more than 500 square metres, which is why it is called ‘the land of a thousand lakes’.
Nordic cross
the belonging to the Nordic countries, as on the flags of Sweden, Denmark or Iceland.
Normally the flag is lowered at dusk. But on Midsummer’s Eve it flies all night, from six in the afternoon of the day before until nine in the evening of Midsummer Day, because on those dates it does not get dark anywhere in Finland.
Before being the flag of the country, the blue cross on white was, from 1861, that of a yacht club in Helsinki, the Nyländska Jaktklubben.
The first official flag of the independent Finnish state was red with a golden lion. It was hoisted for the first time on 28 December 1917 on an icebreaker.
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Test what you have read about the flag of Finland.
Text based on the article “Bandera de Finlandia” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Unknown, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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