A red cross with a blue border on white, created by some students in 1919 and recognised by the British in the middle of a world war.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
Civil, state and military, on land and at seaFIAV 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 white rectangular field with a red cross outlined in blue, 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.
It was designed in 1919 by some Faroese students living in Copenhagen
1940: Germany occupies Denmark and the United Kingdom occupies the Faroes
1948: the islands’ Home Rule Act recognises it as the official flag
1959 and 1998: the shade of the blue changes
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of the Faroe Islands is white, with a red cross surrounded by a blue border. The Faroese call it Merkið, which means “the banner”. These islands of the North Atlantic belong to the Kingdom of Denmark, but they govern themselves in almost everything, and they have their own flag.
It was designed in 1919 by some Faroese students living in Copenhagen, among them Jens Oliver Lisberg. They wanted a symbol of their own for their land. They chose the same scheme as their Scandinavian neighbours: a cross whose vertical arm is closer to the flagpole than to the edge, so that the horizontal arm is long on one side and short on the other. On 22 June 1919 it was hoisted for the first time in Fámjin, a village on the island of Suðuroy.
The design has been the same since 1919; only the shade of the blue has changed. For twenty years it was a popular flag with no official recognition. The Second World War changed everything:
1940
Germany occupies Denmark and the United Kingdom occupies the Faroes. On 25 April, the British authorise Faroese vessels to sail under the Merkið to tell them apart from the Danes.
1948
the islands’ Home Rule Act recognises it as the official flag.
1959 and 1998
the shade of the blue changes, first to a lighter one and then, once again, to a dark one.
No rule sets its meaning, but the usual explanation is this:
White
the clear sky and the foam of the waves breaking against the coast.
Red and blue
colours of the traditional Faroese dress, which match those of Norway and Iceland.
Nordic cross
belonging to the Scandinavian world.
The first flag, the one hoisted in 1919, has been kept since 1955 in the church of Fámjin.
25 April is Flaggdagur, Flag Day, in memory of the British recognition of 1940.
It was not the Danish government who gave it its first official use, but the British troops occupying the islands.
In the islands a version finished with a swallowtail is sometimes seen, but it is not authorised.
Where it is and what borders it.
Test what you have read about the flag of Faroe Islands.
Text based on the article “Bandera de las Islas Feroe” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: It was made by User:IceKarma (Jeffrey Connell), who released it to the public domain., Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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