Greenland Flag

The flag of Greenland is a white band over a red band with a counterchanged disc sitting toward the hoist: the upper half of the circle is red on the white band, the lower half white on the red band.

Greenlanders call it Erfalasorput, which simply means our flag. It was designed by the Greenlandic politician Thue Christiansen.

The geometry is exact. The flag measures 18 by 12 parts, each band is 6 parts deep, and the disc is 8 parts across, its centre offset 7 parts from the hoist.

The reading usually given is the midnight sun and the pack ice: the red half above the line is the sun over the horizon, the white half below is the ice. The red and white also tie the flag to Denmark, of which Greenland is an autonomous part.

Greenland chose its flag by competition and by a single vote. It was adopted on 21 June 1985, the longest day of the year, and it is the only Nordic flag that does not use the Nordic cross.

That absence was the point of the argument. A cross design was on the table and lost, and the winning proposal put a shape from the landscape on the cloth instead of a shape inherited from Scandinavian tradition.