If you haven't heard this already, Denmark has a newly-revised coat of arms.
And no, it wasn't done in response to remarks by the new President of the United States regarding buying/taking/invading Greenland, despite what some of the news stories said. (See, e.g., https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-jr-greenland-denmark-king-changes-royal-coat-arms-rcna186518) The timing was only coincidental; this change has been in discussion for much of 2024; indeed, two of the people on the committee with whom King Frederik X was consulting this past year are people I know personally and consider to be friends: Nils Bartholdy and Ronny Andersen. (It's kind of fun, to be quasi-adjacent to modern heraldic goings-on, especially when they make the international news!)
If you don't care to read the whole thing, the TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read) version is:
The arms of Denmark have a long history of being revised. The biggest change here is to remove the blue field and three crowns of Sweden, and to give greater prominence to the symbols of Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
Here are images of the "old" arms and the new revision:
I personally think it's an improvement (a little less "cluttered"), a change which has nothing to do with any statements about Greenland made by the American President.
I'm glad to see that Denmark, like Spain, is honest about including an inescutcheon of the non-native ruling house, even though Frederick is not an Oldenburg and really ought to replace it with whatever the arms of Montpezat are.
ReplyDeleteKing Charles IS an Oldenburg, however, and if he were honest he'd add the Oldenburg shield to the British arms.