There Are Several Other Flags Hiding Within Norway's Flag

Norway’s red, white, and blue flag isn’t entirely unique—lots of countries use the same color scheme—but the Scandinavian country’s standard contains multitudes. If you look closely, you can find the patterns from six other countries’ flags hidden within it, as the tweet below from Melbourne-based demographics researcher Simon Kuestenmacher illustrates.

If you divide it into smaller segments, Norway’s blue and white Nordic cross on a red background also contains the designs of France’s flag (blue, white, and red vertical stripes), Indonesia’s flag (a red horizontal stripe over a white horizontal stripe), Poland’s flag (a white horizontal stripe over a red horizontal stripe), the Dutch flag (red, white, and blue horizontal stripes), the Thai flag (a large blue horizontal stripe in the middle, surrounded by smaller red and white horizontal stripes above and below), and the Finnish flag (a blue Nordic cross on a white background).

Norwegian Air cleverly worked this subtle feature into a 2015 ad that highlighted each of the flags hidden in Norway’s standard and labeled them with prices for airline fares to those locations.

Much like you can never unsee the white arrow in the FedEx logo, you’ll never be able to look at the Norwegian flag the same way again.

Fascinated by flags? Dive into this history of 25 flags that show up at the Olympics.