History
Legend states that a red cloth with the white cross simply fell from the sky in the middle of the 13-century Battle of Valdemar, after which the Danes were victorious. As a badge of Divine right, Denmark flew its cross in the other Scandinavian countries it ruled and when Iceland became independent, they incorporated the Christian symbol.
The civil flag of Iceland had been used as an unofficial symbol since 1913. It was officially adopted on 19 June 1915, to represent Iceland, and has been in use at sea since 1 December 1918, when Iceland became a separate Kingdom the family of Scandinavian countries. Other symbolic meanings refer to the natural features of Iceland itself. Blue is the colour of the Icelandic mountains, white represents the snow and ice covering the island for most of the year, and red the volcanoes on the island.
Read more about this topic: Flag Of Iceland
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)