Flag of Skåneland
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The "flag of Skåneland", or the Scanian Cross Flag is a provincial flag, representing Scania, the southernmost province of Sweden.
The official regional flag is a banner of arms of the region of Scania (i.e. the county council), adopted 9 February 1999: On a field of blue a yellow crowned griffin head issuing from the bottom edge. The county of Skåne, Skåne län, has also an official flag consisting of a banner of arms: On a field of yellow a red griffin head, crowned blue.
The cross flag is used by the Region when the Council is in session, alongside with the Swedish national flag, the European Union flag and the Council's own banner.
The Scanian cross flag is believed to have been created in 1902 at the private initiative of the historian Mathias Weibull, who based his design on the Scandinavian tradition of cross flags. It combines the red field of the flag of Denmark with the yellow cross of the flag of Sweden, reflecting the troubled history of the region.
A very disputed hypothesis claims that the flag is derived from the coat of arms of the Danish Archbishop of Lund, the Archbishop for all the Nordic countries from about 1100 until the separate Norwegian archdiocese was established in 1152 and the Swedish archdiocese in 1163. His seat was in Lund in present southern Sweden, but in 1536 the archbishop was demoted to an ordinary bishop as a result of the reformation. However, there is no evidence that this coat of arms or the corresponding banner was ever used by him. On the contrary, all sources agree that the archiepiscopal coat of arms depicted the gridiron of St. Lawrence, the patron saint of the Lund Cathedral. This is still the coat of arms of the present diocese of Lund.
[edit] Similar flags
A flag of similar design; with a yellow cross on a red field, was proposed as the flag of Finland before that country settled for its present blue cross on white. It is sometimes used as an unofficial flag by the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. The same colours appear in the Finnish coat of arms.
The same design, with proportions similar to those of the Swedish flag, was the official flag of the Norwegian Nazi party Nasjonal Samling from 1933 until its dissolution in 1945. Red and yellow were considered the national colours of Norway, because they are found in the country's coat of arms. Norwegian myths claim that a yellow, or golden cross on a red background was used as King Olav Haraldson's personal shield until his death at the battle of Stiklestad in AD 1030. This connection made the flag interesting to Quisling who saw his work as a continuation of King Olav's.
