The Vikings flew flags on their ships but these did not have much resemblance to the presentday national flags of the Nordic countries. The Vikings picked up the habit from the Arabs who got the idea from the Chinese. For the Chinese the colors of their silk flags represented philosophical and religious concepts, while the Arabs and Vikings used the colors to represent dynasties and individual chieftains.

The general design of the Nordic flags was born when medieval knights started using banners with crosses on their third crusade to the Holy Land at the end of the 12th century. The early flags were square, just like the Swiss flag, but then they were extended from Sweden’s 10/16 to the Åland Islands 10/19 proportions.

The design for the first Icelandic national flag came from Einar Benediktsson (1864-1940). He proposed a deep blue background with a white cross. That flag is known as Hvitblainn ("the white blue") and was first hoisted in 1897. However its use was restricted by the Danes. At the Stockholm Olympics in 1912, for example, the Danish government prohibited the Icelandic athletes from parading into the stadium under an Icelandic flag.

Another more famous event occurred when an Icelander hoisted the blue and white flag on his small rowing boat in Reykjavik harbour in 1913. The flag was confiscated by a Danish warship that was located there. That incident resulted in people all over Reykjavik making blue and white flags and hoisting them from rooftops and windows all over town the very same day. Many consider this event to be the turning point of the Icelandic struggle for a national flag.

The modern Icelandic flag came into existence in 1915 when a Danish resolution declared that a red cross should be inserted into the white cross of the original flag. The Danish government felt that the original blue and white flag was too similar to the one of the Greek king (Finland had not got its flag at the time). The new Icelandic flag was not to be flown outside Icelandic territorial waters. Between 1914 and 1918 Icelandic vessels - reluctantly - sailed under the red and white Danish flag.

Initially people did not like the new flag as they felt they had not been given the flag for which the patriotic Icelanders had struggled. Einar Benediktsson himself never gave up the idea of the blue and white flag and it was used to drape his coffin at his burial in 1940.

The modern flag is, however, widely accepted today after 70 years of history and the modern Icelander would not change it for anything. The flag is a vision of the Icelandic landscape. Of the three colours of the flag, the deep blue signifies the ocean, the red the fire and the white the ice.

The cross on the flag symbolizes the Christian faith, which the Nordic people have shared for over a millennium. In the sign of the cross, the colours of the Icelan-dic flag unite in a harmonious triad.