Oldest continuously used national flag | Guinness World Records Oldest continuously used national flag Share When 1625 The oldest, continuously used national flag is that of Denmark. The current design of a white Scandinavian cross on a red back ground was adopted in 1625 and its square shape in 1748. In Denmark it is known as the 'Dannebrog' or 'Danish cloth'. Although Denmark was never part of the Roman Empire, similar designs were used by the Empire to represent provinces, as the white cross is symbolic of Christianity. The Scandinavian cross has its horizontal stripe slightly to the left hand side of the square as you face it. Although there is no prescribed definition of what constitutes “continuous" use, the Danish flag was certainly in use in the 1370s, as the Gelre Armorial by Claes Heinenzoon (or Heynen 1345-1414) shows. It was also certainly used in the naval battles during the war against Sweden in the 1560s, as shown in a watercolour in Rudolf Dewenter’s Bericht von Pulver und Feuerwerken from 1585.

In his War Articles, promulgated on 8 May 1625, King Christian IV issued the first known regulations for flying the flag and Colours of Command in the Navy in Denmark. It is often claimed that the Scottish Saltire can lay claim to a longer continuous use as a national flag. According to the Flag Institute, evidence for both the Saltire and the Dannebrog is fragmentary yet their vexillologists believe that the balance of evidence points to Denmark as being older: although St Andrew was named as the country's patron saint in the 14th century, there appears to be no direct evidence that the Saltire was always carried on a blue flag from that date. Flags captured at the battle of Flodden in 1513 bore a saltire, but they were not white on blue. A bill for the manufacture of flags from the same year mentions a red St Andrews flag, not a blue one. The flags captured in 1649–50 by Cromwell after the battles of Dunbar and Worcester include ones with black or red saltires in addition to white ones.

Yet a white saltire on a blue flag was thought of as sufficiently emblematic of Scotland for it to be included in the Union Jack in 1606. It would therefore appear that the saltire, and the saltire alone, that was the symbol of Scotland – the colours of the flag were not of the first importance, particularly in the first half of the 16th century. This would, according to the Flag Institute, bar it from being defined as “continuous" use of the modern flag. All records listed on our website are current and up-to-date. For a full list of record titles, please use our Record Application Search. (You will be need to register / login for access) The Disastrous 14th Century The Disastrous 14th Century First-time Visitors: Please visit Site Map and Disclaimer . Use "Back" to return here. A Distant Mirror - The 14th Century Europe in 1300 was well on the way to rapid expansion. It was rapidly increasing in intellectual and mathematical sophistication. Technically, thanks to water power and the mechanical discoveries that flowed from it, Europe was in the midst of what many historians call the Medieval Industrial Revolution.

One reason there seems to be such a break between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was that there was in fact a break. The 14th Century was a time of turmoil, diminished expectations, loss of confidence in institutions, and feelings of helplessness at forces beyond human control. Historian Barbara Tuchman entitled her book on this period A Distant Mirror because many of our modern problems had counterparts in the 14th Century. Even the extinction of the human race, something we ponder in discussing nuclear war, was faced by medieval Europeans, in fact, far more directly than we ever have. Two Great Natural Disasters The Little Ice Age Two great natural disasters struck Europe in the 14th Century. One was climatic: the Little Ice Age. This term is used in wildly varied ways by different authors, and there actually seem to have been two cooling episodes: an earlier one from the late 1200's to 1600 or so, and a later one in the 1700's and 1800's. During the earlier one, the Baltic Sea froze over in 1303, 1306 and 1307, something never before recorded.

Alpine glaciers advanced. The Norse settlements in Greenland were cut off and grain cultivation ceased in Iceland. The last ship sailed from Iceland to Greenland in the early 1400's (tantalizingly close to Columbus); when contact was resumed in the 1700's, the settlements were long abandoned. Starvation, disease, raids by English pirates and conflict with natives have all been suggested as causes, and all probably played a role in the demise of the colonies. In France, crops failed after heavy rains in 1315; there were widespread famine, reports of cannibalism, and epidemics. The Black Death If the Little Ice Age weakened Europe's agricultural productivity and made life uncomfortable, the Bubonic Plague brought life to a virtual standstill. Tuchman's prose describes the plague as powerfully as anyone. In October 1347, two months after the fall of Calais, Genoese trading ships put into the harbor of Messina in Sicily with dead and dying men at the oars. The ships had come from the Black Sea port of Caffa (now Feodosiya) in the Crimea, where the Genoese maintained a trading post.

The diseased sailors showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin. The swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding. The sick suffered severe pain and died quickly within five days of the first symptoms. As the disease spread, other symptoms of continuous fever and spitting of blood appeared instead of the swellings or buboes. These victims coughed and sweated heavily and died even more quickly, within three days or less, sometimes in 24 hours. In both types everything that issued from the body- breath, sweat, blood from the buboes and lungs, bloody urine, and blood-blackened excrement- smelled foul. Depression and despair accompanied the physical symptoms, and before the end "death is seen seated on the face." The disease was bubonic plague, present in two forms: one that infected the bloodstream, causing the buboes and internal bleeding, and was spread by contact; and a second, more virulent pneumonic type that infected the lungs and was spread by respiratory infection. The presence of both at once caused the high mortality and speed of contagion.

So lethal was the disease that cases were known of persons going to bed well and dying before they woke, of doctors catching the illness at a bedside and dying before the patient. So rapidly did it spread from one to another that to a French physician, Simon de Covino, it seemed as if one sick person "could infect the whole world." The malignity of the pestilence appeared more terrible because its victims knew no prevention and no remedy. Rumors of a terrible plague supposedly arising in China and spreading through Tartary (Central Asia) to India and Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and all of Asia Minor had reached Europe in 1346. They told of a death toll so devastating that all of India was said to be depopulated, whole territories covered by dead bodies, other areas with no one left alive. As added up by Pope Clement VI at Avignon, the total of reported dead reached 23,840,000. In the absence of a concept of contagion, no serious alarm was felt in Europe until the trading ships brought their black burden of pestilence into Messina while other infected ships from the Levant carried it to Genoa and Venice.

By January 1348 it penetrated France via Marseille, and North Africa via Tunis. Shipborne along coasts and navigable rivers, it spread westward from Marseille through the ports of Languedoc to Spain and northward up the Rhone to Avignon, where it arrived in March. It reached Narbonne, Montpellier, Carcassonne, and Toulouse between February and May, and at the same time in Italy spread to Rome and Florence and their hinterlands. Between June and August it reached Bordeaux, Lyon, and Paris, spread to Burgundy and Normandy, and crossed the Channel from Normandy into southern England. From Italy during the same summer it crossed the Alps into Switzerland and reached eastward to Hungary. In a given area the plague accomplished its kill within four to six months and then faded, except in the larger cities, where, rooting into the close-quartered population, it abated during the winter, only to reappear in spring and rage for another six months.

In 1349 it resumed in Paris, spread to Picardy, Flanders, and the Low Countries, and from England to Scotland and Ireland as well as to Norway, where a ghost ship with a cargo of wool and a dead crew drifted offshore until it ran aground near Bergen. From there the plague passed into Sweden Denmark, Prussia, Iceland, and as far as Greenland. Leaving a strange pocket of immunity in Bohemia, and Russia unattacked until 1351, it had passed from most of Europe by mid-1350.Although the mortality rate was erratic, ranging from one fifth in some places to nine tenths or almost total elimination in others, the overall estimate of modern demographers has settled- for the area extending from India to Iceland-around the same figure expressed in Froissart's casual words: "a third of the world died." His estimate, the common one at the time, was not an inspired guess but a borrowing of St. John's figure for mortality from plague in Revelation, the favorite guide to human affairs of the Middle Ages. A third of Europe would have meant about 20 million deaths. No one knows in truth how many died.

Contemporary reports were an awed impression, not an accurate count. In crowded Avignon, it was said, 400 died daily; 7,000 houses emptied by death were shut up; a single graveyard received 11,000 corpses in six weeks; half the city's inhabitants reportedly died, including 9 cardinals or one third of the total, and 70 lesser prelates. Watching the endlessly passing death carts, chroniclers let normal exaggeration take wings and put the Avignon death toll at 62,000 and even at 120,000, although the city's total population was probably less than 50,000. When graveyards filled up, bodies at Avignon were thrown into the Rhone until mass burial pits were dug for dumping the corpses. In London in such pits corpses piled up in layers until they overflowed. Everywhere reports speak of the sick dying too fast for the living to bury. Corpses were dragged out of homes and left in front of doorways. Morning light revealed new piles of bodies.

In Florence the dead were gathered up by the Compagnia della Misericordia - founded in 1244 to care for the sick - whose members wore red robes and hoods masking the face except for the eyes. When their efforts failed, the dead lay putrid in the streets for days at a time. When no coffins were to be had, the bodies were laid on boards, two or three at once, to be carried to graveyards or common pits. Families dumped their own relatives into the pits, or buried them so hastily and thinly "that dogs dragged them forth and devoured their bodies." Amid accumulating death and fear of contagion, people died without last rites and were buried without prayers, a prospect that terrified the last hours of the stricken. A bishop in England gave permission to laymen to make confession to each other as was done by the Apostles, "or if no man is present then even to a woman," and if no priest could be found to administer extreme unction, "then faith must suffice." Clement VII found it necessary to grant remissions of sin to all who died of the plague because so many were unattended by priests. "And no bells tolled," wrote a chronicler of Siena.

"and nobody wept no matter what his loss because almost everyone expected death.... And people said and believed, 'This is the end of the world.' " In Paris, where the plague lasted through 1349, the reported death rate was 800 a day, in Pisa 500, in Vienna 500 to 600. The total dead in Paris numbered 50,000 or half the population. Florence, weakened by the famine of 1347, lost three to four fifths of its citizens, Venice two thirds, Hamburg and Bremen, though smaller in size, about the same proportion. Cities, as centers of transportation, w ere more likely to be affected than villages, although once a village was infected, its death rate was equally high. At Givry, a prosperous village in Burgundy of 1,200 to l,500 people, the parish register records 615 deaths in the space of fourteen weeks, compared to an average of thirty deaths a year in the previous decade.

In three villages of Cambridgeshire, manorial records show a death rate of 47 percent, 57 percent, and in one case 70 percent. When the last survivors, too few to carry on, moved away, a deserted village sank back into the wilderness and disappeared from the map altogether, leaving only a grass-covered ghostly outline to show where mortals once had lived. In enclosed places such as monasteries and prisons, the infection of one person usually meant that of all, as happened in the Franciscan convents of Carcassonne and Marseille, where every inmate without exception died. Of the 140 Dominicans at Montpellier only seven survived. Petrarch's brother Gherardo, member of a Carthusian monastery, buried the prior and 34 fellow monks one by one, sometimes three a day, until he was left alone with his dog and fled to look for a place that would take him in. Watching every comrade die, men in such places could not but wonder whether the strange peril that filled the air had not been sent to exterminate the human race.

In Kilkenny, Ireland, Brother John Clyn of the Friars Minor, another monk left alone among dead men, kept a record of what had happened lest "things which should be remembered perish with time and vanish from the memory of those who come after us." Sensing "the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One," and waiting for death to visit him too, he wrote, "I leave parchment to continue this work, if perchance any man survive and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun." Brother John, as noted by another hand, died of the pestilence, but he foiled oblivion. The first wave swept through Europe in 1347-1350, and there were six more waves between 1350 and 1400 as each new generation of potential victims, not immune to the plague, appeared. The population of Europe was cut by half by 1400. This is probably the closest approach to the effects of a thermonuclear war in history. Bubonic plague still exists. U.S. soldiers were routinely vaccinated against it during the Vietnam war.

It is endemic among wild rodents in the western U.S.; every year a few dozen people catch it and once every few years victims die from it. It appears that humans evolved greater immunity while the most virulent strains of the plague killed off their hosts too quickly to be transmitted. Social Upheavals The Hundred Years' War France was plunged into turmoil by the Hundred Years War (1337-1450). William the Conqueror had invaded England in 1066 and established French rule in England. With French-descended rulers on the throne of England, it was only a matter of time before someone emerged who had a claim on the throne of both countries. The problem was complicated by the fact that English monarch Henry II had married Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose holdings - much of southwestern France - passed under partial control of England. Under the complex rules of the time, however, that rule was still subject to that of the King of France. Edward III of England seems to have launched the war to gain total sovereignty over the region.

At the battles of Crecy (1346) and Agincourt (1416), English commoners, armed with Welsh longbows, slaughtered French knights and Italian and Swiss mercenaries armed with more powerful but slower crossbows. The fame of these battles tends to obscure the bottom line: ultimately the French won the war. At the lowest ebb of French fortunes, the French were rallied by Joan of Arc, who was captured by the English, tried on trumped-up charges of heresy, and burned at the stake in 1431. Collapsing Institutions In the midst of all these upheavals, the Church was scarcely in a position to offer comfort. Since 1309 the Pope had resided at Avignon in southern France, rather than Rome. The "Babylonian Exile" began after the King of France attempted to tax the incomes of Church officials. The Pope responded by forbidding secular rulers to tax the Church and threatening to excommunicate the King, whereupon agents of the King attempted to kidnap the Pope. When a French Pope was elected in 1309, he moved to Avignon for safety and to be closer to his French mistress.

At Avignon, the corruption and moral laxity of the Church reached all-time lows. Tuchman states flatly that in all the secular literature of the time, "clerical celibacy is a joke." The Italian writer Petrarch called Avignon "the Babylon of the West." Avignon was governed by one simple rule: absolutely everything in the Church was for sale, ecclesiastical offices, pardon for sins, holy relics. Pope Clement VI, hardly a spiritual man himself, at one point launched a tirade against his fellow churchmen: What can you preach to the people? If on humility, you yourselves are the proudest of the world, puffed up, pompous and sumptuous in luxuries. If on poverty, you are so covetous that all the benefices of the world are not enough for you. If on chastity - but we will be silent on this, for God knows what each man does and how many of you satisfy your lusts. The Pope was still ruler of much of central Italy - the Papal States, but that rule turned out to be impossible to enforce from Avignon.

Revolts were frequent, inspired by resentment at the Papal exile, the general air of corruption, and heavy taxes to support the lush lifestyles of Avignon. They were fanned by the city-states of northern Italy, who were profoundly uncomfortable at having French power on both sides and who hoped to pick up any pieces of the Papal States that broke off. During one revolt, Cardinal Robert of Geneva subdued the town of Cesena and had about 5,000 civilians massacred, for which he earned the undying hatred of the Italians and the nickname "Butcher of Cesena." When Florence offered Rome inducements to join the revolts, it became obvious that the Pope had to return to Rome or lose it. Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377 and died the next year. With the French cardinals divided among themselves and Italian mobs demanding an Italian Pope, the Cardinals elected the apparently harmless Urban VI, who promptly launched a campaign to end some of the more flagrant forms of Church corruption. Urban made peace with the northern Italian city states and refused to leave Rome, earning the support of the Italians and the enmity of the French.

However, Urban quickly went beyond rational reform and became progressively more irrational and megalomaniacal as his reign wore on. He also began meddling in secular politics in a way that directly threatened French interests. Within a few months the French cardinals declared the election invalid, claiming Italian coercion to name an Italian Pope, They called a conclave of their own and elected as Clement VII none other than Robert of Geneva, the "Butcher of Cesena." Faced on the one hand with the megalomania of Urban and the stupefying French arrogance in naming the one man most hated by the Italians as Pope on the other, even the articulate Tuchman is almost at a loss for words. She comments: "Perhaps by this time the 14th century was not quite sane. If enlightened self-interest is the criterion of sanity, in the verdict of [historian Jules] Michelet, 'no epoch was more naturally mad.'" The so-called Great Western Schism lasted until 1447, during which time there were rival Popes in Rome and Avignon.

Since the Catholic Church based its claim to authority on an unbroken succession of Popes, the existence of two parallel papacies was more than just a power struggle; it was a fundamental challenge to the whole medieval world-view. The corruption of the papal court at Avignon reached legendary proportions and the priestly vows of poverty and celibacy were widely viewed as jokes by the general public. Public disgust with Church scandals fueled some of the earliest stirrings of the Protestant Reformation. The Englishman John Wycliff and the Bohemian Jan Hus were the first of the reformers. Hus was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415; Wycliff died a natural death in 1384 but was tried for heresy after the execution of Hus and his bones dug up and burned. Contact With China Cut Off Kublai Khan was the last great Mongol Khan. After him came a succession of weak and increasingly assimilated rulers. Peasant revolts broke out and eventually became widespread enough to topple the government. The Mongols reverted to their traditional role on the periphery of China with one exception: now the Chinese army knew how to fight Mongol style.

This time the Chinese pursued them into Mongolia and destroyed the Mongol capital at Karakoram. Also the Chinese introduced Tibetan Lamaism, with its emphasis on celibacy and pacifism, as a means of subduing the Mongols. Never again would the Mongols threaten China. The Mongol, or Yuan Dynasty was over; the Ming Dynasty had begun. The Ming Dynasty was a golden age of Chinese culture but also an isolationist period. The Chinese expelled foreigners and the land route to China closed in 1368. Militant Islam Advances Late in the century, the Turks advanced in the Balkans. Islam made its deepest and most threatening penetration of Europe. Twice the Turks would advance to Vienna before being turned back. In the late 1200's, a Turkish clan led by Osman or Othman rose to power and deposed the ruling dynasty in Turkey. The Byzantine Empire, at that time consisting of little more than Constantinople and some surrounding land, invited the Turks to establish a buffer state in Europe between the Byzantine Empire and its European neighbors.

Thus the Turks made an "end run" west of the Byzantine Empire and occupied a large swath of the Balkans before eventually taking Constantinople in 1453. For a time, it was expedient for the Turks to leave Constantinople as a free port and point of contact with Europe; when it outlasted its usefulness, they took it. In 1396, the Pope called a Crusade against the Turks, a Christian army marched into the Balkans, met the Turks in battle at Nicopolis in Bulgaria in 1396, and was slaughtered. The 14th Century saw some of the first stirrings of the Protestant Reformation. One such movement in the Balkans had effects that linger to the present day. A monk named Bogomil (Slavic: Bog=God, miliy=pleasing, hence, pleasing to God) started a movement that was similar to many other proto-Reformation sects in Europe. It was a very minimalist sect that rejected the Church hierarchy and most ceremonies and placed primary emphasis on personal belief. Because the Bogomils, as they were called, rejected Church structure, they were considered heretics by both the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches.

When the Turks invaded, bringing Islam, the Bogomils decided that Islam was rather compatible with their own beliefs, since it too had no hierarchy or ceremony and stressed a basic set of core beliefs. Also, the Bogomils were not welcome in either established church. They converted en masse to Islam. The conversion of the Bogomils is the reason five million Muslims live in former Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia. Their Catholic (Croatian) and Orthodox (Serbian) neighbors regard the Bogomils as traitors and their descendants as the descendants of traitors. This animosity will not be healed anytime soon. Aftermath of the Disasters The effects of the disorders on Western Europe were many. In the immediate wake of the plague, the natural response was shock and apathy. There are accounts of animals going untended and crops going unharvested. Later, many of the survivors sought comfort in self-indulgence. Self-indulgence was aided by the fact that the survivors inherited the wealth of the dead, and wages increased because of severe labor shortages. Episodes of hysteria and religious fanaticism were also common. One sinister outlet for fear and frustration was the search for scapegoats. Two came readily to mind.

In some places, the Jews were blamed, although they died of the plague as much as anyone else. Often outbreaks of anti-Semitism were linked to resentment over money-lending and a desire to erase debts. By curious coincidence, account ledgers tended to disappear during attacks on the Jews. Another scapegoat was witches. Contrary to popular stereotype, the Middle Ages placed very little emphasis on witchcraft. Those who did write on the subject tended to dismiss purported witches as deluded. But a sensational event in France in the early 14th century raised public consciousness of witchcraft to all-time highs. It involved a strange military religious order called the Knights Templars, a uniquely medieval institution that was a combination religious order and private army. The Knights Templars were originally conceived as the military arm of the Church during the Crusades, and by the 1300's they had amassed a vast treasury. King Philip the Fair of France saw the Templars as a source of revenue, and in 1307 he swept down on the Templars and had every one in France arrested on the same night.

It's a measure of the degree to which the Templars had become soft and slack that Philip could make the doubtless elaborate preparations for his assault and the Templars had not a clue that it was about to happen. To justify the takeover, Philip staged show trials in which the Templars were accused of homosexuality (probably at least partly true) bestiality, devil-worship, and every other dark superstition of the time. In 1314 the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was executed. Before being executed, he called down a curse on the King and on France, and summoned the King and the Pope to meet him before God's judgement throne in a year. The Pope died within a month, Philip seven months later. For decades France saw a succession of short-lived rulers, seemingly demostrating the power of the curse. The long-range importance of the Templar episode, in Tuchman's words: "French justice became corrupted, and the pattern laid for the fanatic witchcraft persecutions of subsequent centuries." When the plague struck, the heightened consciousness of witchcraft found new outlets for suspicion.

(Modern writers, horrified by something as alien as medieval witch hysteria, deal with it with a sort of modern witch hysteria of their own. One widespread theory is that claims of alleged witchcraft were inspired by surviving pockets of pre-Christian cults; another is that they were a means of suppressing the sexuality of women. These both reflect modern academic fantasies more than historical reality.) In 1393 a dramatic event occurred in France that came to symbolize the pessimism of the age. At a royal masquerade ball, the King and five of his friends appeared as "wood savages" in costumes with shaggy hemp glued on by pitch and wax. In an effort to see through the disguises, an onlooker got too close with a torch, a costume caught fire and rapidly ignited the other costumes. The King's life was saved by a quick-thinking onlooker, and another reveler dove into a water container, but the rest were not so fortunate. One died on the spot, three others lingered several days in agony before dying.

The last to die had been bitterly hated for his contempt and maltreatment of the common people, who generally felt that he got what he deserved and who jeered his casket as it passed through the streets. At the same time, the people were enraged that the King's life had been carelessly endangered, and even the King was hard put to cool their anger at the organizers of the event. This event became a popular subject for illustration. In general, graphic, even morbid, realism began to pervade art (yet another similarity with the 20th Century). In 1300 a knight might choose to be represented on his tombstone as a young knight in all his vigor; by 1400 graphic depictions of skeletons and decay as a warning of mortality were in vogue. Start of the Renaissance By 1400, the worst of the upheavals had passed and European society was on the mend. The term " Renaissance" was first used in the late 14th century by Italian scholars who saw themselves as the vanguard of a period of improved conditions. References Cipolla, C. M., 1975, Before the Industrial Revolution, Norton, 326 p.

Tuchman, B. W., 1978, A Distant Mirror, Knopf, New York, 677 p. History of Sweden – more than Vikings | Official site of Sweden Photo: Conny Fridh/ imagebank.sweden.se History of Sweden Fourteen thousand years ago, Sweden was still covered by a thick ice cap. As the ice retreated, people moved in. Ale’s stones pictured here are from the Iron Age – before Vikings, war-hungry kings, peace and the race into modernity. War, peace and progress From 8,000 BC to 6,000 BC, Sweden as a whole became populated by people who lived by hunting, gathering and fishing, and who used simple stone tools. Dwelling places and graves dating from the Stone Age, lasting until about 1,800 BC, are found today in increasing numbers. The Bronze Age was marked in the Nordic region – especially in Denmark but also in Sweden – by a high level of culture, shown by the artifacts found in graves. After 500 BC, such artifacts become increasingly rare as iron came into more general use.

During the early Iron Age, the population of Sweden became settled, and agriculture came to form the basis of the economy and society. Vikings and early Christians The Viking Age (800–1050 AD) was characterised by a significant expansion of activity, in Sweden’s case largely toward the east. Many Viking expeditions set off from Sweden to both plunder and trade along the Baltic coast and the rivers that stretched deep into present-day Russia. The Vikings traveled as far as the Black and Caspian Seas, where they developed trading links with the Byzantine Empire and the Arab kingdoms. Christianity first reached Sweden with a mission led by Ansgar, who visited in the 9th century, but the country was not converted to Christianity until the 11th century. Founding of the kingdom The various provinces of Sweden were absorbed around 1000 AD into a single unit, but the crown began to gain significant influence only during the late 13th century. In 1280 King Magnus Ladulås (1275–90) issued a statute authorising the establishment of a nobility and the organisation of society on the feudal model.

The Hanseatic period Trade grew during the 14th century, especially with the German towns grouped under the leadership of Lübeck. By the mid-16th century, this group, known as the Hanseatic League, dominated Swedish trade, and many towns were founded as a result of lively commercial activity. However, the Black Death, which reached Sweden in 1350, led to a long period of economic and population decline. On the church green in Mora in 1520, Gustav Vasa urged residents of the town to take up arms and help free Sweden from Danish occupation. Photo: Nationalmuseum The Kalmar Union In 1389, the crowns of Denmark, Norway and Sweden were united under the rule of the Danish Queen Margareta. In 1397, the Kalmar Union was formed, with the three Scandinavian countries under a single monarch. However, the union (1397–1523) was scarred by internal conflicts that culminated in the ‘Stockholm Bloodbath’ in 1520, when 80 Swedish nobles were executed at the instigation of the Danish union king, Kristian II.

The act provoked a rebellion, which in 1521 led to the deposition of Kristian II and the seizure of power by a Swedish nobleman, Gustav Vasa, who was elected king of Sweden in 1523. The Vasa period The foundations of the Swedish state were laid during the reign of Gustav Vasa (1523–60). The church was nationalised, its estates confiscated by the crown, and the Protestant Reformation was introduced. Power was concentrated in the hands of the king and hereditary monarchy came into force in 1544. The Swedish empire Since the dissolution of the Kalmar Union, Swedish foreign policy had been aimed at gaining dominion over the Baltic Sea, leading to repeated wars with Denmark from the 1560s onward. After Sweden intervened in 1630 with great success in the Thirty Years’ War on the side of the German Protestants, and Gustav II Adolf became one of Europe’s most powerful monarchs, Sweden defeated Denmark in the two wars of 1643–45 and 1657–58.

Finland, provinces in northern Germany and the present-day Baltic republics also belonged to Sweden, and after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the Peace of Roskilde with Denmark in 1658, Sweden was a great power in northern Europe. The country even founded a short-lived colony in what is now Delaware in North America. However, Sweden had a largely agrarian economy and lacked the resources to maintain its position as a great power in the long run. After its defeat in the Great Northern War (1700–21) against the combined forces of Denmark, Poland and Russia, Sweden lost most of its provinces on the other side of the Baltic Sea and was reduced essentially to the same frontiers as present-day Sweden and Finland. During the Napoleonic Wars, Sweden surrendered Finland to Russia. As compensation, the French marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, who had been elected heir to the Swedish throne in 1810, succeeded in obtaining Norway, which was forced into a union with Sweden in 1814. This union was peacefully dissolved in 1905 after many internal disputes.

18th/19th century Sweden After the death of the warrior king Karl XII in 1718 and Sweden’s defeat in the Great Northern War, the Swedish parliament (Riksdag) and council were strong enough to introduce a new constitution that abolished royal absolutism and put power in the hands of parliament. Eighteenth-century Sweden was characterised by rapid cultural development, partly through close contact with France. Overseas trade was hard hit by the Napoleonic Wars, which led to general stagnation and economic crisis in Sweden during the early 19th century. In the late 19th century, 90 per cent of the people still earned their livelihoods from agriculture. One consequence was emigration, mainly to North America. From the mid-19th century to 1930, about 1.5 million Swedes emigrated, out of a population of 3.5 million in 1850 and slightly more than 6 million in 1930.

Industry did not begin to grow until the 1890s, although it then developed rapidly between 1900 and 1930 and transformed Sweden into one of Europe’s leading industrial nations after World War II. Famous Swedish monarchs Gustav II Adolf (1611-1632) By intervening in the Thirty Years’ War, Gustav II Adolf came to assume great political importance, and internationally is the best known of Sweden’s kings. Under his rule, Sweden became a leading military power. Gustav II Adolf was killed in 1632 at the Battle of Lützen. Kristina (1632-1654) Excepting the short caretaker government of Queen Ulrika Eleonora 1719–20, Kristina is the only female monarch of the modern Swedish kingdom. She succeeded Gustav II Adolf in 1632, just before her sixth birthday, and ruled for 22 years. Kristina abdicated in 1654, converting to Catholicism and settling in Rome, and was succeeded by her cousin, Karl Gustav.

When he died in 1660, she traveled to Sweden in the hope of reclaiming the throne. Her claim was rejected by parliament, however, and Kristina returned to Rome. Gustav III (1771-1792) Usually called the Theatre King, Gustav III was a keen patron of the arts, and founded the first opera in Stockholm in 1782, the Swedish Academy and the Royal Aca­demy of Music. His reign was not popular with the high nobility, however, and opposition culminated in a conspiracy in 1792, when he was shot at a masked ball held at the opera. He died shortly after. On 3 September 1967, Sweden switched from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right. The result was chaos in the streets. Photo: Leif Engberg/Scanpix The 20th century – a century of reforms Late 19th-century Sweden was marked by the emergence of strong popular movements that included the free churches, the temperance and women’s movements, and above all the labour movement.

The labour movement, whose growth kept pace with industrialization in the late 19th century, was reformist in outlook after the turn of the 20th century. The first Social Democrats entered government in 1917. Universal suffrage was introduced for men in 1909 and for women in 1921. Plans for a welfare state were drawn up during the 1930s after the Social Democrats rose to power, and put into effect after World War II. The postwar era During World War II, a coalition of Sweden’s four ‘democratic’ parties (excluding the Communists) formed the government. After the war ended, a purely Social Democratic government resumed office under Per Albin Hansson. Under Social Democratic leadership, but in close co-operation with the other democratic parties, a series of reforms were carried out in the 1940s and 1950s that together laid the foundations of the Swedish welfare state. At the same time, there were calls for a modernization of the 1809 constitution.

A new Instrument of Government was adopted in 1974, stating that all public power is derived from the people, who are to select the members of parliament in free elections. The monarch is still the head of state, but in name only. In 1979, an amendment to the order of succession gave male and female heirs an equal claim to the throne. Accordingly, Crown Princess Victoria is next in line to the throne, not her younger brother, Carl Philip. Foreign policy Since a short war against Norway in 1814 in conjunction with the creation of the union, Sweden has not been involved in any war. Since World War I, Sweden has pursued a policy of non-alignment in peacetime and neutrality in wartime, basing its security on a strong national defense. Nonetheless, Sweden joined the League of Nations in 1920 and the United Nations in 1946. The first UN operation involving Swedish troops took place in Suez in 1956. Since 1994, Sweden has also co-operated with Nato under the Partnership for Peace. Through these organisations, Sweden has been involved in numerous international peacekeeping missions. Dag Hammarskjöld.

Photo: UN Photo/JO Well-known figures in history Saint Bridget (1303–73) After being widowed, Bridget (Birgitta in Swedish) made her way to Rome, where she was to live the rest of her life. She undertook several pilgrimages, including to Jerusalem. Bridget was known for her ‘heavenly revelations’, visions and prophetic messages, which she relayed to popes and princes. Bridget was canonised in 1491 and since 2000 has been considered one of Europe’s patron saints. Alfred Nobel (1833–96) The inventor, chemist and benefactor received his first patent in 1863 for a method for handling nitroglycerin by mixing it with black powder and lighting the mixture with a fuse. Nobel went on to produce dynamite and other explosives. The Nobel Prizes were a bequest from Nobel for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–61) An economist and government official, Hammarskjöld was appointed UN secretary-general in 1953.

He quickly became associated with the strategy of ‘quiet diplomacy’, which in 1955 resulted in the release of American prisoners of war in China. En route to a meeting during the Congo crisis, Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash in northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). The same year, he was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Swedish government The economic crisis of the early 1970s broke the long hegemony of the Social Democrats. Since 1976, power has changed hands more often. 1976 Non-socialist coalition government under the leadership of Centre Party chairman Thorbjörn Fälldin. 1982 Social Democratic Party, with Olof Palme as prime minister. The murder of Olof Palme on February 28, 1986, came as a shock to the Swedish people, who had been spared such political violence for almost 200 years. Palme’s successor as prime minister was Ingvar Carlsson. 1991 Non-socialist coalition government, with Moderate Party leader Carl Bildt as prime minister. 1994 A minority government led by Social Democrat Ingvar Carlsson.

In 1996, Carlsson stepped down and was replaced by his finance minister, Göran Persson, who remained prime minister for 10 years. 2006 The Moderate Party emerged as the main victor. Together with the Centre Party, the Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats, it formed a coalition government headed by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. 2010 Although the Moderate Party achieved its best election result yet, Reinfeldt had to retain his coalition partners to stay in office. For the first time in history, there were eight parties in the Riksdag, including an far-right party for the first time. 2014 The Social Democrats and the Greens won the election and formed a minority coalition, led by Stefan Löfven. Sweden and the EU presidency Sweden joined the EU on January 1, 1995. In a national referendum in 2003, a majority of the country’s voters voted not to join the euro. The government sees Sweden’s role in the EU as important for the country’s future.

Sweden has held the EU presidency twice: 1 January – 30 June 2001, and 30 June – 31 December 2009. Useful links Please note that this web version of ‘History of Sweden’ may have been updated more recently than the pdf versions. The ship that surfaced after 300 years The battleship Vasa was commissioned by King Gustav II Adolf in 1625. On August 10, 1628, the Vasa weighed anchor in Stockholm, but its maiden voyage ended in disaster. The Vasa sank after only 20 minutes. After a lengthy search, the ship was rediscovered in 1956 and salvaged in 1961. Today the Vasa, by far the best preserved example of ship construction and naval warfare of that era, can be seen at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. Mementos in stone There are more than 2,500 rune stones in Sweden, with messages dating from the 5th century to the mid-12th century, making them the oldest preserved Swedish documents.

Relatives often had stones erected in memory of a dead family member, many of them alongside roads, bridges or meeting places where they could be seen and read by many. The Sámi in Sweden The first document to mention the Sámi was written almost 2,000 years ago. Inland parts of upper Norrland are known to have been inhabited even longer, however – for close to 10,000 years. The Sámi have had to fight for their rights, and were recognised by the Riksdag as an indigenous people first in 1977. In 1993 the Sámi Parliament was established as both a democratically elected body and a national administrative authority. There are an estimated 20,000 Sámi in Sweden, about 2,500 of whom earn their living from reindeer husbandry.

Last updated: 21 June 2016 Tags Friesland Province (The Netherlands) This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website Friesland Province (The Netherlands) by Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 8 Sep 2013 adopted 9 July 1957. The Netherlands - Index of all pages History of the flag A flag with pompeblêdden (lily leaves) was already mentioned in the "Gudrunlied" from the 11th century. This was also used by the Ommelanden . Since the middle of the 19th century the flag is used by the Fryske Biweging, and was accepted by the Deputed States (Provincial Legislature) in 1897. During the festivities of the 40th and 50th reigning jubilee of Queen Wilhelmina in 1938 and 1948 it was used by each municipality with the municipal arms in the canton. Finally it was officially adopted 9 July 1957 by the States of Friesland, nr. 12 Prov./besluit 20.

The provincial paper, 1958, nr. 12, gives detailed construction sheets. Mark Sensen, 19 April 1998 When I was researching Friesland for one of my Up The Pole columns I was told that the 1984 Guinness Book of Records credits the Frisian flag as dating from the 9th century. Apparently no reason is given as to why I was also told that the Frisian flag was designed by Dutch heraldist Heerke Wenning just before 1897 - is this true? David Cohen, 20 April 1998 >From < ~redbad/flag.html > Short history of the Frisian flag The Frisian flag, as we currently know it, probably flew for the first time in the year 1895. The family De Zee from Jirnsum (Irnsum) designed it. Around 1897 it was produced commercially by the company De Leeuw & De Zee in Jirnsum. Mr. Sj. de Zee was inspired for his design by a historical drawing of a coat of arms.

He had found drawings of a Frisian arms in a book by Hamconius (1620) and by one in a book by Schotanus (1718). Hamconius took his image of the coat of arms from an elaborate description given by the first official historian of Friesland, Suffridius Petrus (1527-1597). Suffridius states that a coat of arms was given to the legendary king Friso. It had a blue background and three slanting silver bars. On these silver bars lie seven red waterlily-leaves. The number seven is said to symbolize the "Seven Frisian Sea-lands" that make up Friesland. Suffridius says that examples of arms can be found in old heraldic books and on church windows. Some of these armorials of the 15th century have survived to date. In a French armorial of around 1475 we find an arms of "Le Roy Frise". It has a blue background, slanting silver bars and nine red hearts. There is evidence that the Frisian coat of arms originated from Denmark or one of its surrounding countries.

Around 1525 Jancko Douwama writes that King Redbad (late 7th-/ early 8th century) borrowed parts of his fathers Danish arms and blended them with the Frisian coat of arms. In the 11th century poems of the Gudrun-song there are lines that indicate that in the regions between the Scheldt and Jutland a blue flag could be found with waterlily-leaves on it. Gudrun can be traced back to the 8th century. In the royal arms of the Swedish king Waldemar Birgersson dating from 1252 hearts can be found. These hearts resemble the leaves of the waterlily, and are often interchanged. (Just recently Mr. J. Nicolay, after doing research on gold hoards, has concluded that the aristocracy of Friesland in the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th century came from Scandinavia.) In 1957 the flag with the "pompebledden" (waterlily-leaves) was officially declared to be the Flag of the province Fryslân.

Source: De Fryske Flagge, in It Beaken (Tydskrift fan de Fryske Akademy), April 1956. Jarig Bakker, 8 October 2000 Official description "A flag of seven diagonal stripes of equal width, alternate cobalt blue and white. The stripe in the middle starting at the top of the hoist side and going from corner to corner; the white stripes charged with seven scarlet red lily leaves perpendicular to the axis of the stripe and placed 2:3:2." Pantone colours: red: 032U; blue: 300U; white: opaque. Proportions: 9:13. Mark Sensen, 19 April 1998 Explanation The three white stripes could stand for the rural quarters Oostergo , Westergo and Sevenwolden/Zevenwouden , the blue stripes for the Frisian rivers.

The seven lily leaves represent the seven old Frisian "zeelanden", as they existed from around the 8th till the 14th century: Frisia between Reker and Vlie ( West-Friesland [West Frisia], nowadays in North Holland); Frisia between Vlie and Middelzee ( Westergo , western half of the modern province); Frisia between Middelzee and Lauwers ( Oostergo , most of the eastern half of the modern province) Sevenwolden (southeast of the modern province, the north of the modern province Overijssel and the whole of the modern province Drenthe); Frisia between Lauwers and Eems ( Ommelanden , nowadays in Groningen); Frisia between Eems and Jade ( Ostfriesland [East Frisia], Germany); Frisia between Jade and Weser (nowadays in Germany); See map (5kb) .

Mark Sensen, 19 April 1998 Jos Poels in [poe90] Poels 1990 mentions another division of Frisia: West Frisia; the modern province of Friesland; Hunsingo and Fivelingo (both part of the Ommelanden); East Frisia; Jeverland; and North Frisia. Mark Sensen, 20 April 1998 Usage According to [ped80] Pedersen 1980 the Provincial States of Friesland adopted the national Frisian flag as provincial flag, so that it's possible for Frisians in Germany to recognize the flag. On the Frisian States' yacht "Friso", (which is property of the province) the Frisian flag is used as jack if the national flag is used at the stern. It is the most popular provincial flag in the Netherlands, and I'm sure that there are more Dutchmen who know this flag than there are who know their own provincial flag! Also, other flags are popular in Friesland -- not only municipal flags, but also those of cities and even villages within the municipality that fly their own flags!

Mark Sensen, 20 April 1998 and 25 April 1998 1938 Parade flag In 1938 Queen Wilhelmina had reigned the Netherlands for 40 years. On that occasion a lot of municipalities paraded in front of HM with their flags, which consisted of the provincial flag with the municipal Coat of Arms in the canton (or something...). Those municipal flags can only be considered as 'curiosities', while the status of the provincial flags is not quite clear. However friesland used their own flag. Jarig Bakker, 26 January 2001 Proposals L aa13] Van der Laars 1913 already proposed the flag with the lily leaves as the most obvious design. As alternatives, he proposed a banner of the arms (blue, with two golden lions passant, accompanied by 7 billets placed 2:2:3), a bicolour yellow over blue, or a triband blue over yellow over blue.

Mark Sensen, 19 April 1998 Wimpels From: 'De Vrije Fries', 1986 The 'Fryske Rie foar Heraldyk' has proposed for all new Frisian municipalities, originating from former "grietenijen" (municipalities), a swallowtailed wimpel with in the fly two stripes along the length in the colors of their original 'gouwen' (counties): in Oostergo red-white; in Westergo blue-white and Zevenwouden green-white. For the Frisian 11 cities it was proposed to adopt in the fly the colors of the Frisian Coat of Arms: blue-yellow. Each wimpel would have a square hoist, on which the central figure from the municipal Coat of Arms. A similar pattern was proposed for the Wadden-islands: in the fly the colors blue (for Friesland) and red (of the lion of Holland) - because two of the four islands (Vlieland and Terschelling) were in the province of Noordholland until the second World War.

<Schiermonnikoog was a possession of a German until 1945, when it was annexed as Domain of the State of the Netherlands as 'enemy possession'.> For the 'waterschappen' (polderboards): on the fly of white three green 'pompebladeren' (lily-leaves) The wimpel is not subject to flag-protocol and is allowed to hang outside after dark. A wimpel has the advantage of recognizability and can be flown alongside other wimpels and flags. Jarig Bakker 18 October 2000 Friesland Coat of Arms International Civic Arms : "Azure two lions passant in pale or, between seven billets of the same, placed horizontally two, two and three. The shield is crested by a coronet of four pearls between five leaves or. Supporters: two lions rampant or." Friesland is a province in the North of the Netherlands. Friesland originally included a larger area, of which parts are now in Noord Holland, Groningen and Germany. The Frisians formed an independent state.

The German Emperor Frederik Barbarossa made Friesland a condominium between the Counts of Holland and the Bishops of Utrecht. The counts of Holland, however, failed to establish their power in the area. They only obtained West-Friesland , now part of the province of Noord Holland. At the same time the Counts of Gelre claimed the eastern part of the area. They also failed to establish their power for a longer period. To establish their claim they used arms with two lions on a field with silver coins. The lion was the lion of Gelre . It symbolized Gelre and Friesland. When the province finally became part of the Netherlands the arms were continued. In the 16th century the coins were replaced by 7 rectangles, representing the seven districts of (ancient) Friesland. The arms haven't changed since then. from this page . These silver coins appear on a banner shown on this page , giving the ‘Chronicles of Brabant’ as a source – about 1/3 down the page, just above the West Frisian flag.

This page in Dutch indicates that above version was used by overlords Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, Dukes of Burgundy, intermittently between 1435 and 1473. Also, the ‘Chronicles of Brabant’ and hence the first appearance of the bezants – and in the form of a banner of arms, of a Frisian flag – are placed in the second half of the 14th century. Jan Mertens, May 16 2011 Friesland flag from Steenbergen by Jaume Ollé, 4 Jul 2003 Jaume Ollé just sent images of Steenbergen's flagbook (c. 1870) to the Vexillum-list. Among them the flag of Friesland (#765), consisting of a blue field with two lions passant with on both sides three yellow blocks.

This is not mentioned in Sierksma's Nederlands Vlaggenboek, 1962, and neither in van der Laars' Wapens, Vlaggen en Zegels van Nederland (1913), although the last contains an image of a proposed flag for Fryslân with 7 yellow blocks (one below the bottom lion). Searching a little more I found in Norris and Hobbs (1848) a flag of Friesland (#142), nearly identical to Steenbergen's image, except that the lions are regardant. Jarig Bakker, 4 Jul 2003 Friesland flag from LeGras by Jaume Ollé, 4 Jul 2003 According to Derkwillem Visser's Gemeentevlaggen en wapens Koninkrijk der Nederlanden (2001) a French book of 1858 contained an image of the Fryslân flag nearly identical to Steenbergen's image - the blocks are wider apart and there is a block below the bottom lion.

That book is Legras "Album des Pavillons, Guidons, flammes", Paris, 1858, who apparently made a thorough search in the Netherlands - some authorities complained about his inquisitiveness. <I've slightly altered Jaume's gif.> The matter becomes more complicated because the Noord-Holland region of West-Friesland uses a blue flag with two yellow lions, with three rows of blocks, one left, one right, and one between the lions. Nine blocks in all. However the number of blocks seems to have varied. At present there is a discussion about how many blocks should be on the West-Frisian flag. Jarig Bakker, 4 Jul 2003

Question: Which European Country has the oldest State Flag, dating back to the 14th century?
Answer: DENMARK