Flag of Greenland
national flag of Greenland
The flag of Greenland features two equal horizontal bands of white (top) and red (bottom) with a counter-changed red-and-white disc slightly to the hoist side of centre. The entire flag measures 18 by 12 parts; each stripe measures six parts; the disc is eight parts in diameter, horizontally offset by seven parts from the hoist to the centre of the circle, and vertically centred. It was designed by Greenlandic politician Thue Christiansen. The territory of Greenland is an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
Its local name in the Greenlandic language is Erfalasorput, which means "our flag". The term Aappalaartoq (meaning "the red") is also used for both the Greenlandic flag and the flag of Denmark (Dannebrog). Today, Greenlanders display both the Erfalasorput and the Dannebrog—often side by side. The flag of Greenland is the only national flag of a Nordic country or territory without a Nordic cross, but is similar to the cultural Sámi flag, which also features a circular design and counterchanging of field and charge.
History
Greenland first entertained the idea of a flag of its own in 1973 when five Greenlanders proposed a green, white and blue flag. The following year, a newspaper solicited 11 design proposals (all but one of which was a Nordic cross) and polled the people to determine the most popular.
“Flag of Greenland” enters the record as national flag of Greenland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Flag, Greenland and national can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q184268. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Flag of Greenland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.