Not from here, where flanking the house you can just about see the two cherry trees in bloom:
but a few minutes earlier it looked like this from the garden:
Everyone in Norway has their flags up today:
Except us. We couldn’t decide which flag to fly, so we removed the pole that came with the house. Anyway, today’s VE Day, 8 May, the anniversary of the end of the European part of WW2. Only churches fly flags in England. If a private house had a flagpole and flew the Union Jack today it would seem a bit peculiar. If you waved the St. George’s cross, the red-and-white English flag, people would just think you were a right-wing extremist. I’ve tried to design my own flag, but it’s not as easy as you’d think; every shape and colour already symbolises something that I’d just as soon not have on my flag.
A Bad Guide 
I think three goats marching towards the sun in a vert field, would look nice and representative
That’s not a flag, Julia, but the coat of arms of tha Crown family. Or some predecessor.
¡Ja! I mean ha! who would have thought it? We need to introduce something Norwegian there, this looks too English.
And you know, flags can be done through coat of arms.
(In fact I’m not sure of the relation between them, but let’s think it’s possible ;-)
The goats of arms, obviously.
Some states use coats of arms in their national flags, but I think that’s a recent invention by usurpers trying to out-emblemize their predecessors.
There’s another historical connection. Some flags were made by extracting the main colours or a geometrical shape from the coats of arms. The Swedish cross can be derived from the horizontal and vertical bars of Sweden’s large coat of arms. The Danish flag is said to have fallen from the sky during the siege of Tallin in 12-something, but I think it’s transparently formed from the emblem of their allies, the Livonian knights. Norway was destined to have a red flag with a yellow cross, from the old cross of St. Olav, but I think that smacked more of an accomodation to the new Swedish overlords than the pro-Danish ruling class of 1814 could bear. Anyway, the fascist collaborators of WWII used it as a party flag, so now it’s tainted forever.
L’écu du chevrealier de la Couronne, obviously.
>Trond Engen
Excellent this “chevrealier”!
Speaking of nazi’s symbols, have you seen the one of extreme-right party of Greece? Unfortunately this symbol is not nowadays in the fiction, like in the film “The Wall”. I have just known that there is other American organization, Hammerskin Nation, whose logo is based on this film.
Why not fly a flag of a blue background with the date 1945/05/08 in white?
(All the best flags are blue and white.)
a red flag with a yellow cross, …more of an accommodation to the new Swedish overlords than the pro-Danish ruling class of 1814 could bear.
As well as clashing.
I think three goats marching towards the sun in a vert field
I like this a lot. I would have them butting. Possibly two shades of blue and white, as dearie suggests.
Jesús, I don’t understand, but I’ve never seen The Wall – is this the thing by Pink Floyd, or the Berlin wall?
Dearie, the date would be backwards on one side of the flag, whereas goats (for example) can’t be backwards (= better).
>A.J.P. Crown
I didn’t see the film of Pink Floyd either but here you can see these crossed hammers:
That’s really good. I suppose I’ll have to watch the whole thing now.
I think that film inspired the world’s first street newspaper. It’s come a long way since its humble beginning.
AJP: It might look better if the “/i” is replaced with an “/a” in my first link.
a red flag with a yellow cross
clashing
Spain once ruled the world under those colours Admiral Nelson as the naval fashion police?
There’s a thought: Crown’s patriotic flag could be a sketch of a singed beard. (Is that the correct past participle of the verb to singe?)
>Trond Engen
I only found that our navy had a flat since 1785 rather similar to our present one.
You’re right about the modern flag, but the use of the two colours is older, stemming from the Aragonese half of Isabella and Ferdinand’s united kingdom. But my interpolation to conclude that they were used continually without Castillian symbols was probably wrong.
Interesting that the flags deriving from the Viking coat(s) of arms have three lions (or groups of three lions) with open mouths showing their tongues. The flag of Normandy is one of the simplest ones, with three gold lions rampant (= not standing on their hind legs) on a gules (red) ground. (Gules is from French <gueules</i ‘maws (of carnivores)’). This design is also incorporated in the full version of the British flag.
A new(?) sociological observation about the weather: my wife was talking today to the chap who runs the tea and coffee stall in the market. He said that because today had been much warmer and we’d even had dry spells, coffee sales fell and tea sales rose. In the previous five weeks of cool, wet weather he sold lots of coffee and less tea. In March, when we had an unseasonal summer, he sold lots of tea and less coffee.
I suppose messrs Tesco might already know this, but I didn’t.
I’m very happy to learn that about gules. What a nice bit of random lore. And I love the word “maw”.
This design is also incorporated in the full version of the British flag
m-l, that’s the royal standard, it’s the flag they fly when the queen’s at Buckingham Palace or on her yacht, or wherever. It has nothing to do with the common folk.
rampant (= not standing on their hind legs)
Thanks. That’s a word I ought to have looked up years ago.
The queen doesn’t have a yacht: it had to be flogged off so that we could buy a posher plane for Tony Blair, or something of the sort.
She wouldn’t have ever had a bloody yacht if I had anything to do with it. Nor any of the millions of palaces, aeroplanes, horses, cars, hats, jewels, tiny dogs or artwork.
Cuckoo parasites, is that your view of the monarchy?
The vocabulary of heraldry is mostly medieval, with a lot of Old French words. Rampant still literally means ‘crawling’ (a form of the verb ramper ‘to crawl’).
I used ‘maw’ for gules/gueules since gueule normally means ‘mouth (of a carnivore)’ (although it can also be used slangily for ‘mouth (of a person)). Only in heraldry does the plural (in either language) mean ‘red’.
I expect English rampant is cognate with ramp, then.
Castannea & m-l discussed gueule, for ‘mouth’, here (and scroll down to 4 am 30 April).