Flag of Oslo

The flag of Oslo, the capital of Norway, is blue and carries in the centre the seal of the city: a saint seated on a throne, with a millstone and three arrows. It is a drawing from the Middle Ages. And it is a flag that, according to Norwegian law, should not exist.

How it came about

The saint is Hallvard, patron of Oslo. The oldest seal of the city, from around 1300, already showed him on his throne. In 1924 the architect Børre Ulrichsen drew the colour version used today.

That same year Oslo (then called Kristiania) celebrated its 300th anniversary with a flag of four blue and white stripes. It was never officially approved. In January 2000 the city council decided to replace it with the seal on a blue field, and the new flag began to fly in 2002.

How it has changed

Oslo has had two flags in a century.

1. 

   1924-2000

   Four blue and white stripes, created for the third centenary of the city.

2. 

   2000

   The seal of Saint Hallvard on blue. It was decided in January 2000 and was hoisted from 2002.

What it means

Almost the whole drawing tells the death of the saint, according to tradition.

• Saint Hallvard

  a young nobleman who, in 1043, tried to protect a woman accused of theft. The accusers killed them both.

• Three arrows

  the weapons with which he was killed.

• Millstone

  they tied it to his neck to sink his body in a fjord, but the body floated up. That is how the crime was discovered.

• Reclining woman

  the woman Hallvard tried to save, although in the medieval seal there was another figure (see ‘Fun facts’).

• Motto

  ‘Unanimiter et constanter’, in Latin, ‘united and steadfast’.

Fun facts

1. A flag outside the law

   Since 1933 a Norwegian law forbids municipalities from flying flags that the king has not approved, with fines or up to three months in prison. Oslo never asked for that approval for its flag.

2. Too similar to Greece

   According to the vexillologist Jan Oskar Engene, one of the reasons for retiring the 1924 stripes was that the town hall thought they recalled the Greek flag, also blue and white.

3. The woman was a warrior

   In the medieval seal, at the saint’s feet there was not a woman but an armed warrior, one of his killers defeated. The seal was so worn that later it was read as the woman of the legend.

4. Trondheim chose the opposite path

   Trondheim, the other great historic city of Norway, also has an old and complicated coat of arms, but it accepted a simple flag under the official rules and the king approved it.

Location

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