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Three crowns of Sweden

by Jan Oskar Engene

History of the three crowns of Sweden
Present use of the three crowns on flags

See also:

History of the charge

Three golden crowns on a blue field is the small coat of arms of Sweden. Both the crowns, and the fact that there are three of them, have led to much speculation and some quite fanciful interpretations of the significance of the arms.

Scheffer [sch63, pp 236-244], mentions three such myths (or hypothesises), all of them attempting to explain why there are three crowns in the arms.

The crowns represent the three crowned gods of the Uppsala, the seat of a holy place, before the introduction of Christianity.
The crowns represent the three areas of Uppland (the area around Uppsala) that had the right to participate in the election of the king.
The three crowns represent the Three Wise Men (or Holy Kings).

A hypothesis that the three crowns were the arms of Sweden's patron saint King Erik (died 1160) has also been presented. King Erik is sometimes depicted together with the three crowns. However, there is nothing to suggest that he used the arms [sch63, pp 236-244].

The arms with three crowns were first used in a seal of a Swedish king in 1364, when Albrecht became king of Sweden (he was originally Duke of Mecklenburg). In a short time it became the arms of Sweden, rather than the arms of the dynasty in power. However, there is evidence that the arms are older. It has been suggested that the crowns are just a symbol of the king's power, and that the number three is without significance. One, two or three crowns had been used on coins of Swedish coins before Albrecht's time. King Albrecht also used a seal with only one crown [sch63, pp 236-244]. The actual arms with three crowns are also found in a fresco in Avignon, commemorating a 1336 meeting of cardinals [nev92, p 15]. In 1336, Magnus Eriksson (1316-1374) was king of Sweden. He had inherited the crown of Norway from his grandfather Haakon V of Norway, and got the Swedish crown because his father was the brother of the king of Sweden. In the 1330s king Magnus bought Scania from Denmark, and subsequently used the title King of Sweden, Norway and Scania. It is therefor possible that the three crowns were intended to represent King Magnus' three kingdoms. This interpretation also fitted well into the union policies of later times (Denmark then replacing Scania). Even today we can find three crowns in the coat of arms of Denmark, now officially said to commemorate the Scandinavian unions (rather than territorial claims).

There are some references to the three crowns as the Swedish 'national banner' (Swedish: riksbanér). In the chronicle Ernst von Kirchberg started writing in 1378, the Reimchronik, King Albrecht is depicted with a pennant like banner that is dark blue and charged with three golden crowns [nev93, pp 44-45]. However, as far as I can se