Flag of Finland

What it means

• Blue: no official meaning; it is popularly said to be Finland's thousands of lakes and the sky
• White: popularly the snow of the long winter
• Cross: a Christian symbol shared with the other Nordic flags

Where it came from

Around 1860 the poet Zachris Topelius is said to have suggested a blue cross on white, and a Helsinki yacht club was already using a blue cross design in 1861.

After Finland became independent from Russia in December 1917, the blue cross flag was adopted on 28 May 1918. Eero Snellman and Bruno Tuukkanen worked out its final form.

History

In the 1800s, when Finland was part of the Russian Empire, there was no single Finnish flag. In 1848 a white flag with the coat of arms was shown at the first performance of the song "Maamme" ("Our Land"), now the national anthem. In 1910 a Russian order to add the Russian flag to Finnish flags was resisted, and Finns mocked it as the "slave's flag".

The artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela proposed a white cross on blue, but it was rejected as too much like the flags of Sweden and Greece. The state flag adds the coat of arms in the centre of the cross.

Easy to mix up with

• Iceland: Iceland has the same cross shape, but it is red edged in white on a blue field
• Sweden: Sweden has the same cross shape but in yellow on blue
• Greece: Greece has a white cross on blue in its corner, plus blue and white stripes