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Kristiansund, Møre og Romsdal (Norway)

image by Tomislav Šipek, 12 February 2016

The Flag
Vertical Flag
Coat of Arms

See also:

The Flag

Kristiansund also has an ordinary flag: White cloth with the town seal in the centre, proportions 8:11. I have never seen that flag in use.
Helge Jacobsen, 06 March 2010

The flag of Kristiansund is presented here, so I drew a simple flag as instructed by Helge Jacobsen.
Tomislav Šipek, 12 February 2016

Some days ago you wondered whetether the Kristiansund flag was in use. Definitely it is!
I have been to almost all towns in Norway, and I have never seen any town or city flag used to the same exteent as the Kristiansund flag, looking like a Tibetan prayer flag.
In Norway it is not usual to fly town flags, except to flying from town halls and other official flag poles on social occations. In Kristiansund, when I visited the town for my summer holidays, the white and blue town flag was flying all over the town.

There are some odd facts about the flag: The flag contains the town seal from 1742. The shade of blue in this seal is slightly darker then the light blue field at the down end of the flag, which is more like UN light blue. The shape of the seal is a bit odd. In 1742 the seal was drawn by the "stiftsamtmann" in Trondheim, Mr. Nissen, who lived in Trondheim. He had never been to Kristiansund. In those days, the charming little town was named "Fosna" or "Fosen" or "Lille Fosen". In Norwegian the word "foss" means waterfall. Therefore Mr. Nissen felt sure that there was a waterfall in the town. So he went on, constructing a seal with a cliff, a "foss" (watwerfall), and three salmons swimming upstream. The mistake is that Fosna, or Kristiansund, has neither cliffs, nor waterfall or salmons(!). It is a fishing port, but based on sea fishing, dried fish, not rivers and salmons! But the town has kept the seal!
The construction of a seal was ordered by the central authorities in Copenhagen (in those days Denmark and Norway was one country, with Copenhagen as the capital city). The seal was approved by king Christian the 6th. I suppose that the name change to Christiansund (=Kristiansund) is named from him. Please note that for many years it ws common to name the town as Kristiansund N (N = North) to distinguish the town from the bigger town, Kristiansand S (S = South). Nowadays the towns are usually recognized by postal zip codes, and N or S are not very commonly used.
I do add some photos of the Kristiansund flag, from my visit there in 2004.
Helge Jacobsen, 06 March 2010

Coat of Arms

image by Tomislav Šipek, 12 February 2016

Kristiansund, unofficial (proposed, possibly never used?); using coat of arms drawing from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kristiansund_vapen.svg
Željko Heimer, 04 March 2010

Kristiansund, Møre og Romsdal (Norway)

The Flag

The Vertical Flag

Coat of Arms