By our count, nineteen national flags of UN member states carry a cross, and several more, among them Slovakia, Serbia and Moldova, show one inside a coat of arms. The cross is the main design on fifteen of them: the five Nordic flags of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland; the upright crosses of Switzerland, Georgia, Greece, Tonga, the Dominican Republic, Dominica and Malta; and the diagonal saltires of the United Kingdom, Jamaica and Burundi. Four more, Australia, New Zealand, Tuvalu and Fiji, carry the crosses of the Union Jack in their canton. Denmark’s Dannebrog, in continuous use since at least 1625, is the oldest of them all.
| Country | Kind of cross | Current flag adopted |
|---|---|---|
| Denmark | White Nordic cross on red | In use since at least 1625 |
| Sweden | Yellow Nordic cross on blue | Flag law of 22 June 1906 |
| Norway | Blue Nordic cross edged white, on red | 1821 |
| Iceland | Red cross edged white, on blue | 1915 design; law of 17 June 1944 |
| Finland | Blue Nordic cross on white | 1918 |
| Greece | White cross in the canton | 13 January 1822 (sole flag 1978) |
| Dominican Republic | White centred cross | 28 February 1844 |
| Tonga | Red cross in a white canton | 1875 |
| Switzerland | White Greek cross on a square red field | Dimensions fixed 1889 |
| Malta | George Cross in the canton | 21 September 1964 |
| Dominica | Yellow, black and white cross | 3 November 1978 |
| Georgia | Five red crosses on white | 14 January 2004 |
| United Kingdom | St George’s cross plus two saltires | 1801 |
| Jamaica | Gold saltire | 6 August 1962 |
| Burundi | White saltire | After 1966 (3:5 ratio from 27 September 1982) |
| Australia, New Zealand, Tuvalu, Fiji | Union Jack in the canton | 1954, 1902, 1978, 1970 |
| Slovakia, Serbia, Moldova | Cross within the coat of arms | 1992, 2004 (redrawn 2010), 1990 |
The Dannebrog and the Nordic Cross Family
A Nordic cross runs to the edges of the flag with its upright shifted towards the hoist, a shape that grew out of the Dannebrog’s use as a maritime flag in the 18th century. Danish kings are attested using a white-on-red cross banner from the 14th century, and an origin legend links the flag to the Battle of Lindanise in 1219. Guinness World Records lists it as the oldest continuously used national flag, counting from 1625. A regulation of 1748, still in force, sets the cross at one-seventh of the flag’s height.
Denmark’s neighbours followed its lead. During the Kalmar Union of 1397 to 1523, the union flag was reportedly a red Nordic cross on yellow. Sweden’s yellow cross on blue is believed to come from its coat of arms of 1442, a blue field quartered by a gold cross, and blue and yellow have been Swedish colours since at least Magnus III’s arms of 1275. The flag law of 22 June 1906 fixed the shades as light medium blue and golden yellow. Norway’s red flag with a white-edged blue cross was designed by Fredrik Meltzer, a member of the Storting, and approved for civilian use on 13 July 1821. It was the first Nordic cross with three colours. A union mark combining Norwegian and Swedish colours was added to its hoist in 1844, nicknamed “the herring salad”, and removed from the civil flag in 1899.
Iceland flew an unofficial white cross on blue from the late 19th century; in 1915 a red cross was added inside the white one to set it apart from similar designs, and it became the national flag when Iceland gained sovereignty in 1918. Law No. 34/1944, passed on 17 June 1944, the day the republic was founded, describes it as sky-blue with a snow-white cross and a fiery-red cross. Finland adopted its blue cross on white, the siniristilippu, in 1918 after independence from Russia; the blue is said to stand for the lakes and sky and the white for winter snow. Greenland is the exception in the Nordic world: its home-rule flag was chosen in June 1985 by fourteen votes to eleven over a proposed green-and-white Nordic cross.
Upright Crosses: Switzerland, Georgia, Greece, Tonga and the Caribbean
Switzerland’s white Greek cross, with arms of equal length that stop short of the edges, was the field sign of the Old Swiss Confederacy from the late 13th or early 14th century. The Federal Council described it in 1889 as both a Christian symbol and the old confederate field sign, and fixed its dimensions that year; in 2017 the size of the cross relative to the field was set at 5:8. The flag is square, one of only two national flags with that shape alongside Vatican City’s.
Georgia’s Five-Cross Flag, a large red cross with four smaller crosses in the quarters, goes back to a banner of the medieval Kingdom of Georgia shown on a 14th-century map by Domenico and Francesco Pizzigano. Parliament passed a bill to restore it in 1999, but President Eduard Shevardnadze did not endorse it; Parliament finally adopted it on 14 January 2004, now marked each year as Flag Day.
Greece places a white cross in a blue canton above nine blue-and-white stripes. The First National Assembly at Epidaurus adopted the flag on 13 January 1822, and in 1978 this former sea flag became the sole national flag. The popular reading links the nine stripes to the syllables of Eleftheria i Thanatos, “Freedom or Death”. Tonga’s red flag with a red cross in a white canton was enshrined in the 1875 constitution, which says it can never be changed; King George Tupou I, converted by Wesleyan missionaries in 1831, wanted a flag that represented Christianity.
In the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic’s white cross divides blue and red quarters. Designed by Juan Pablo Duarte, it was first hoisted on 28 February 1844, the day after the war of independence from Haiti began. Dominica’s green flag, designed by the playwright Alwin Bully and adopted on 3 November 1978, carries a cross of yellow, black and white stripes representing the Trinity, with a red disc holding a sisserou parrot and ten stars for the island’s parishes. Malta’s cross is a medal: the George Cross, awarded by George VI on 15 April 1942 for the island’s wartime courage, added to the flag on 28 December 1943 and given a red edge in place of its blue canton at independence on 21 September 1964.
Saltires: the Union Jack, Jamaica and Burundi
A saltire is a diagonal cross. The Union Jack layers three crosses: the red cross of St George for England, the white saltire of St Andrew for Scotland, and the red saltire of St Patrick for Ireland. It began with a flag of Great Britain proclaimed by James VI and I in 1606, and the present design was set by an order in council after the Act of Union 1800 created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Wales does not appear because it was already part of the Kingdom of England when the first union flag was designed.
Jamaica’s gold saltire on green and black was adopted on 6 August 1962, its independence day. Over 360 entries to a design competition produced no winner; a bipartisan committee first proposed horizontal stripes, but that looked too much like Tanganyika’s flag, so the saltire was substituted. Jamaicans sometimes simply call the flag “The Cross”.
Burundi adopted its first flag at independence from Belgium on 1 July 1962 and has revised it several times since; the present design took shape after the monarchy was abolished in November 1966, when the royal karyenda drum was removed from the centre. Today a white saltire divides red and green quarters and merges into a central white disc holding three red six-pointed stars for the Hutu, Twa and Tutsi peoples and for the motto Ubumwe, Ibikorwa, Amajambere, “Unity, Work, Progress”. The ratio changed from 2:3 to 3:5 on 27 September 1982.
Union Jack Cantons in Australia, New Zealand, Tuvalu and Fiji
Four Pacific flags carry the crosses of St George, St Andrew and St Patrick secondhand, in the upper hoist corner of a Blue Ensign. Australia’s first flew on 3 September 1901, with the Commonwealth Star and the five stars of the Southern Cross; the Flags Act 1953 made it the Australian National Flag in 1954 and gave it precedence over the Union Jack. New Zealand’s ensign, with four red stars for the Southern Cross, was designed for colonial ships in 1869 and given statutory recognition in 1902; in a 2016 referendum voters kept it by 57 per cent to 43. Tuvalu adopted a light-blue flag with the Union Jack and nine yellow stars, one for each island, at independence on 1 October 1978. A government replaced it in 1995 in a move towards republicanism, but the independence flag was restored on 11 April 1997.
Fiji, adopting its flag on 10 October 1970, counts twice: besides the Union Jack in its canton, the shield from its 1908 coat of arms is divided by a red cross, with a gold lion above and sugarcane, a coconut palm, bananas and a dove in the quarters. A plan to drop the colonial symbols, announced by Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama in 2013, was abandoned in August 2016.
Crosses Inside Coats of Arms: Slovakia, Serbia and Moldova
Slovakia’s white-blue-red tricolour, in its current form since the constitution took effect on 3 September 1992, carries a red shield with a silver double cross standing on three blue hills. The double cross is a Christian symbol, and the hills stand for the Tatra, Fatra and Matra ranges. Serbia’s state flag shows a double-headed eagle holding a shield with the Serbian cross: a white cross on red with four firesteels between its arms, a device already in the 1835 Sretenje Constitution. The current flag dates from 2004, with the arms redrawn in 2010. Moldova’s blue-yellow-red tricolour carries the 1990 national arms, in which a golden eagle holds an Orthodox cross in its beak.
Read as a set, these flags trace Christianity through Scandinavian kingdoms, Swiss cantons, a Georgian royal banner and Pacific missions, and British heraldry through the Commonwealth. For flags where the cross runs corner to corner, see our guide to flags with a diagonal cross; for a close look at the oldest of them, read about the flag of Denmark, or compare the Nordic designs in flags with a white cross.