Flag of Bouvet Island

What the flag of Bouvet Island looks like

The flag shown for Bouvet Island is the national flag of Norway. It is a red rectangle with a blue cross outlined in white. The cross is a Nordic (Scandinavian) cross: its vertical bar sits closer to the hoist than the center, and both arms reach the edges of the flag. The proportions are 8:11, a little squarer than most national flags.

Bouvet Island has never had a flag, coat of arms or local government of its own, because no one lives there. The territory is listed under the code BV, and the Bouvet Island flag emoji simply repeats the Norwegian design. You can see the original on the page for Norway.

Why Bouvet Island uses the Norwegian flag

Bouvet Island is one of Norway's three dependencies outside the kingdom proper, together with Peter I Island and Queen Maud Land in Antarctica. It is not part of any Norwegian county or municipality. The island has no separate flag, so the Norwegian state flag stands for it on maps, in the ISO country list and at the few places where a flag is needed.

The Norwegian flag's designer gave no written explanation of his colors, but historians infer them from his letters. Red and blue are understood to refer to Denmark and Sweden, Norway's former and then-current union partners, while red, white and blue together were chosen as colors of freedom, as seen in the French, Dutch and American flags. The Nordic cross stands for Christianity.

History of Bouvet Island and its flag

The French navigator Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier sighted the island in 1739, but he did not land. The British captain James Lindsay sighted it again in 1808. A Norwegian expedition raised the Norwegian flag there on 1 December 1927 and claimed the island, and a royal decree confirmed the annexation in 1928. The United Kingdom renounced its own claim in November 1929, and a 1930 act made Bouvet Island a Norwegian dependency.

The Norwegian flag itself dates from 1821, when the Storting adopted a design by Fredrik Meltzer. The union emblem was removed from the national and state flags in 1898 and from the navy flag in 1905, when the union with Sweden ended.

About the island itself

Bouvet Island covers about 49 square kilometers, about 93 percent of it covered by glacier, and it is among the most remote islands in the world. The nearest inhabited land is Tristan da Cunha, more than 2,000 kilometers away. It is a volcanic island with steep ice cliffs, and landing is difficult. Since 1971 it has been a nature reserve. The only structure is a small wind-powered station with an automated weather station, set up in 2012. Visits are very rare.