Flag Maps of Northern Europe: Nordic, Cross, Horizontal

The composition of Northern Europe is interesting; let’s take a look at the flag maps of Northern Europe to help define which countries are a part of it and which are not. When we think of this region the obvious Scandinavian countries spring to mind, but what about others that are so-called Eastern European who have more of a connection with Europe of the north yet are linguistically eastern? What about countries that are politically more Western European but historically and genetically more northern? Let’s have a look!

This 3rd in the series of the FLAG MAPS of Europe will be focusing on Northern Europe. The countries of Northern Europe have a long history of being at the same time remotely removed from western and central Europe and deeply ingrained in their internal politics via their continual presence as raiders and traders.

The flags of this region are national flags represented by maps. These European flags consist primarily of the Nordic Cross flags and horizontal striped red, blue, white flags. Also, the yellow, green, and gold of Lithuania.

The Vikings, for example, dominated the coasts of Western Europe between the 8th and 17th centuries while at the same time forging inland across present-day Eastern Europe from Novgorod to Constantinople. Definitive countries of Northern Europe include (alphabetical order):

• 🇩🇰 Denmark
• 🇫🇮 Finland
• 🇮🇸 Iceland
• 🇳🇴 Norway
• 🇸🇪 Sweden

The other 3 Northern European countries would be Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. There has been a push to include these Baltic Nations into the lineup of northern Europe, which is all fine and dandy; however, it is my impression that this serves more political purposes rather than fulfilling linguistic or cultural ones.

If anything, Estonia definitely is more Northern European in my eyes as its language is very closely related to Finnish as a Finno-Ugric language. Lithuania and Latvia are sister nations whose languages are Baltic and descend from the same linguistic branch of the Indo-European family tree as the Slavic languages – they would be cousins.

Although linguistically more Eastern European, the politics and history of Lithuania and Latvia have definitely been intrinsically intertwined with both Western Europe and Northern Europe via the Baltic Sea trade and war routes. That being said, we might also include these 3 countries on the list of Northern European flag maps:

• 🇪🇪 Estonia
• 🇱🇻 Latvia
• 🇱🇹 Lithuania

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