Swedish Population in the Åland Islands

Blue and yellow were naturally the favourite colours, being both the colours of Sweden and the colours of the provincial coat of arms (a golden deer on blue), Therefore, when preparing a design for adoption in the early 1950s, the favoured design was a Scandinavian cross design of a blue field and a yellow and blue cross – that is, the flag of Sweden with an extra blue cross in the middle. This proposal was rejected by the president of Finland as too similar to the Swedish flag.

Source: Erik Tudeer and Lars-Øyvind Liljestrom: Ålands flagga, Mariehamn: Nordens Institut på Åland, 1994, ISBN: 952-90-5534-X (40 pages, 10 colour illustrations mostly of proposed designs)
Jan Oskar Engene, 22 October 1995