Flag of Sweden

How to read it

The Act on Sweden’s Flag (lag om Sveriges flagga, 1982:269) of 29 April 1982 makes the flag blue with a yellow cross set at right angles to its edges: light mid-blue (ljust mellanblå) in the fields and gold-yellow (guldgul) on the cross. The rectangular flag is 10 high by 16 long; its inner fields are 4 by 5, its outer fields 4 by 9, and each arm of the cross is half as wide as a field is high. A regulation of 1983 (1983:826) fixes the shades in the Natural Colour System: blue 4055-R95B and yellow 0580-Y10R. The flag first appears in Gustav Vasa’s grant of arms to Duke Johan in 1557, Store norske leksikon says, and the light blue dates from the flag law of 22 June 1906; before that the blue was dark, much like Norway’s.

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Telling it from Ukraine’s flag

Ukraine’s flag is the same two colours without a cross: two equal horizontal bands, blue over yellow, as Ukraine’s constitution describes it. Sweden’s is a single blue field with the yellow cross over it.

Telling it from the other Nordic crosses

Sweden’s model was Danish: the National Archives says the design was surely taken from Denmark, whose red and white cross flag had long been its symbol. The colours are the arms’: the three gold crowns on blue of the small coat of arms, and the gold cross that quarters the great coat of arms into four blue fields. 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, Denmark’s is a white cross on red (28 by 37); 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).

Three tongues for the King and the navy

The law allows two forms: the rectangular flag and the three-tongued flag (tretungad), which is half as high as it is long, tongues included. The head of state, and with his permission other members of the royal house, may fly the three-tongued flag with the great or small coat of arms on a white field at the centre of the cross, and the Armed Forces fly it as the naval flag. Everyone else uses the rectangular flag, and no marks, letters or other signs may be added to it.

The union mark, 1844 to 1905

From 1844 to 1905 the flag carried the union mark of Sweden and Norway, nicknamed “sildesalaten” (the herring salad), in the upper field by the pole, brought in to meet Norwegian demands for equality in the union. It was removed from Swedish flags on 1 November 1905, after the union was dissolved, Store norske leksikon says.

Flag Day on 6 June

Flag festivals have been held at Skansen in Stockholm since the 1890s, and since 1916 Swedish Flag Day has been marked across the country on 6 June, the day Gustav Vasa was elected king in 1523 and the date the Instrument of Government of 1809 was adopted. Since 1983 it has been Sweden’s national day, the National Archives says.