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Aasiaat (Greenland, Denmark)

Aasiaat Kommuniat

Last modified: 2006-02-18 by dov gutterman
Keywords: aasiaat | egedesminde | spider | web |
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image by Antonio Martins, 25 January 2006



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Overview

The flag of Aasiaat (previously knowm as Egedesminde) is white and charged with the municipal Coat of Arms as seen at photo at <www.nunaportalen.gl> (defunct).
Dov Gutterman, 9 July 2004

Aasiaat is the smallest (area-wise) greenlandic municipality. I found a photo at <iserit.greennet.gl/aasmuseum>: either the same or a different one, it does show a building with two flag poles - one with the Greenland flag and the other, wind limp, mostely white with something; the file name seems to imply Aasiaat...
Antonio Martins, 9 July 2004 and 15 October 2005

I recently researched municipal flags in Greenland by correspondence with municipal authorities in Greenland. The results have just been published in the Fall 2005 issue of Nordisk Flaggkontakt, the journal of the Nordic Flag Society [joe05].
I managed to get confirmation from 15 of 18 municipalities all using the same flag model - the coat of arms on a white field (the colour white carries no symbolism). Aasiaat is one of them.
Jan Oskar Engene, 24 October 2005


Coat of Arms


image by Antonio Martins, 10 January 2006

According to <www.ngw.nl>, quoting from Aachen's 1982 book [ach82] , The arms were granted in 1969, making it the oldest arms in Greenland. The name "Aasiaat" means "the spiders", making the arms canting. The division of the shield symbolises the fact that the municipality is in the middle of Greenland, with the ice masses of the Disko Bay in the North and the ice-free waters in the South. The name "Aasiaat" actually is a wrong name, the original Inuit name being "Asiaat". Furthermore, the only spiders that live in that part of Greenland do not make webs. Explanation of the shield's division: per fess white over blue standing for this municipality's location, between the ice masses to the North and the ice-free sea water to the South.
Antonio Martins, 9 July 2004 and 15 October 2005