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Southern Swedish region Skåne’s flag gets official status

The flag of Skåne in southwestern Sweden has been made an official symbol of the region – despite resistance from several quarters.

Published: 29 November 2017 14:41 CET

Southern Swedish region Skåne's flag gets official status

The red and gold flag. Photo: Gunnar Lundmark/Svd/SCANPIX/TT

The flag is red with a gold cross and has been used for centuries. But until now, it hasn’t been allowed to fly alongside the Swedish flag for official purposes, because the regional version didn’t have official status.

Now Skåne's regional council has decided that the flag should be recognized as an official symbol, after approving a proposal from regional chairperson Henrik Fritzon, who said the design was the oldest regional flag in Sweden and was popular among local residents.

All parties apart from the Left Party voted in favour of the decision.

READ ALSO: Five reasons we love Skåne (and why you should too)

Sara Svensson, regional group leader for the Left Party, described the proposal as “protectionist” and “very sad” on her blog.

Svensson said that her party saw “no reason at all to force or encourage the Skåne region to strengthen the national romantic proposal about flags” and called for more focus on welfare issues instead.

Sweden's State Herald, Henrik Klackenberg – the officer responsible for heraldry, which includes flags as well as coats of arms – had objected to the move, on the grounds that the colours are already used by Uppsala, and the similarity to the party flag of Norwegian fascist regime Nasjonal Samling (National Unity) between 1933 and 1945.

A red and gold Nordic cross flag is also used in Finland to represent Swedish-speaking Finns.

READ ALSO: 17 dialect words you'll need to know to survive in southern Sweden

Do Taylor Swift's ancestors really come from a small parish in rural Sweden?

Lodged in the mountains between Östersund and Norway, Offerdal in the region of Jämtland is home to some 2,000 people. It may also be the ancestral home of Taylor Swift.

Or maybe not. It’s not entirely clear. Bear with us.

“It’s been written about in several newspapers since as long ago as 2014. Because specifically Offerdal and a village called Söderåsen are mentioned in those articles, we’ve been curious about this for a while,” Sara Swedenmark, chair of the Offerdal Community Association, told The Local.

READ ALSO:

How to research your Swedish ancestry

When Swift decided to launch her Eras Tour in Sweden (she’s set to perform in Stockholm on May 17th-19th), the group decided to look into her possible connection with Offerdal, which is mentioned on several American genealogy sites, but always without reference to a source.

During their research, they found two people from the area who could possibly be related to Swift. One of them is Olof Thorsson, who is the main person rumoured to be one of her ancestors.

“We can see that there are people who connect them, but in one place the line is broken because there’s a man who married several times. So we haven’t found a direct line of descent, but we’re not saying it doesn’t exist. Because we’re talking about around 1,200 people in 400 years, there could be other possibilities,” said Swedenmark.

A church in the parish of Offerdal. Photo: Offerdal/Wikimedia Commons

Thorsson travelled with his family in 1641 to New Sweden – a Swedish colony in what today are Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland – on board the ship Kalmar Nyckel. He is said to have committed a crime in Sweden and was sent abroad for penal labour.

“We haven’t found which crime he allegedly committed, even though there are conviction records from this time, which makes us doubt whether he actually lived here,” said Swedenmark.

“Another person who was banished from the country around this time in Offerdal received it as punishment for having put witchcraft on the neighbour’s cattle.”

An oil painting by Jacob Hägg, depicting the ship Kalmar Nyckel. Photo: Sjöfartsmuséet/Wikimedia Commons

But they also found another possible connection with Swift: a man known as Jöns The Black Smith Andersson, his wife Maria and their daughter Brita, who travelled to New Sweden in 1654.

“There seem to be certain relations here via half siblings in the early 18th century,” said Swedenmark, urging readers to reach out if they have more information. “The Church of Sweden started keeping population records in the later half of the 17th century, so it’s not completely straightforward to track down roots from this time.”

So in other words, nothing concrete that confirms that Swift does indeed descend from Offerdal, and the parish is not the only place in the world that’s purportedly connected to the artist. Genealogy company Ancestry claims she’s related to the American poet Emily Dickinson, and according to My Heritage she’s also related to France’s King Louis XIV and US actor Johnny Depp.

Offerdal, by contrast, is rather less grand. But what might life have been like at the time?

“Offerdal in the 17th century was an uneasy place, because Jämtland was being torn between the Swedish king and the Danish-Norwegian king,” explained Swedenmark. “There were a lot of wars in close succession and farms were seized if the owner swore their allegiance to the ‘wrong’ king. There were around 30 villages and 600 people in the parish.”

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