⌘, a square with loops at the corners, which is sometimes referred to as Saint John's Arms, the Place of Interest Sign,[1] or Saint Hannes cross, is an ancient symbol now commonly used throughout Northern Europe.
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The symbol appears on a number of objects in Northern Europe. It features prominently on an image stone from Hablingbo, Gotland, Sweden that was created between 400–600 AD.[2]
It is also similar to a traditional heraldic emblem called a Bowen knot.[3]
In Finland, the symbol was painted or carved on houses, barns and everyday objects such as tableware to protect them and their owners from evil spirits and bad luck. Oldest known findings are decorations on a pair of 1000-year-old, pre-Christian wooden skis.[4]
In modern times, the symbol is commonly found in Belarus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden as an indicator of cultural locations.
The symbol later gained international recognition via computing. It is used on Apple keyboards as the symbol for the command key, where it got a variety of slang names: "cloverleaf", "splat", "splodge", "butterfly", "squiggle", "beanie", "curly-do", "cauliflower", "propeller", "shamrock", "doily", and "puppy print". In Unicode it is encoded at U+2318 ⌘ place of interest sign (HTML: ⌘ ) in block Miscellaneous Technical.
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