the cross design represents christianity, and the characteristic shift of the center to the hoist side is early modern, first described the danish civil ensign ("koffardiflaget") for merchant ships in a regulation of 11 june 1748, which specified the shift of the cross center towards the hoist as "the two first fields must be square in form and the two outer fields must be lengths of those". the danish design was adopted for the flags of norway (civil ensign 1821) and sweden (1906), both derived from a common ensign used during the union between sweden and norway 1818–1844, as well as iceland (1915) and finland (1917); some of the subdivisions of these countries used this as inspiration for their own flags. the norwegian flag was the first nordic cross flag with three colours.