Flag of Denmark

How to read it

The flag law (lov om flagning) of 10 December 2024, in force since 1 January 2025, says only that Dannebrog is the national flag of the Kingdom of Denmark, and keeps the swallow-tailed form for the royal house, the Folketing, state authorities, the courts and institutions with special permission. Before then no rule made it the national flag; it had that status by more than a century of practice, the Ministry of Justice noted in the bill. The ministry’s notes give the design: a white cross reaching the edge of the flag on a red ground, Pantone 186C; the cross 1/7 of the flag’s height at the pole; the two fields by the pole square, and the outer fields 1¾ times as long as the inner ones. That is the flag Store norske leksikon gives as 28 high by 37 long.

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The legend of Lyndanisse

According to legend, the Dannebrog fell from heaven during the Battle of Lyndanisse, near present-day Tallinn, on 15 June 1219. King Valdemar Sejr’s Danish army was on the defensive when a red banner with a white cross fell from the sky; the Danes’ luck changed and they won, ERR News retells. Historians first mentioned the legend in the early 16th century, and since 1913 the flag and its legend have been celebrated in Denmark every 15 June, Valdemar’s Day. Store norske leksikon notes that it is historians who tie the legend to Lyndanisse; the legend itself places the miracle in 1208 at Viljandi (Fellin), also in Estonia.

Store norske leksikon calls the Dannebrog the world’s oldest national flag, and says the crosses in the Nordic flags stand for the countries’ Christian tradition.

Telling it from the other Nordic crosses

Norway’s flag is the one built from Denmark’s. When Frederik Meltzer proposed it to the Storting, he pointed out that old Danish flags could be cut into four along the white stripes, moved apart and sewn together with strips of blue, Store norske leksikon says. All five Nordic flags set the upright of the cross towards the pole. Dannebrog was the first, followed by Sweden’s, Norway’s, Finland’s and Iceland’s, in the encyclopedia’s order. Of the others, Sweden’s is a yellow cross on blue (10 by 16); Finland’s a blue cross on white (11 by 18); Iceland’s a red cross edged in white on sky blue (18 by 25); Norway’s a dark blue cross edged in white on red (16 by 22).

The swallow-tailed state flag

The swallow-tailed Dannebrog (splitflag) is the state flag. The navy already flew it in the 15th century, and from the mid-1800s it was also the state flag, Store norske leksikon says. Its inner fields are those of the plain flag, but the arm of the cross between the outer fields is only 1¼ times the side of an inner field, and the outer fields run on into pointed tails, at the top and bottom edges 1½ times the length of the rectangular part, the Ministry of Justice’s notes say. The navy’s flag is a darker red, Pantone 194C.

Anyone may fly the plain, rectangular flag. That has been so since a royal resolution of 7 July 1854; until then private people could hoist no flag at all, Danish or foreign. The 2024 law forbids flying other countries’ national flags, apart from the Finnish, Faroese, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and German flags.