Orkney’s flag received was approved in 2007. For a few decades a flag for Orkney named the The Cross of Saint Magnus, using the colours of the Scottish royal standard in Scandinavian form, a red offset cross on a yellow field, was used. This was ruled to be too similar to the arms of Ulster to gain the official seal of approval. A competition for a new Orcadian flag provided many entries, from which a shortlist of five, all sanctioned by the Lord Lyon, were drawn. The resulting winning design by Duncan Tullock retains the red and yellow colours of the original flag and the link to the red and yellow Scottish and Norwegian Royal Standards with blue for the sea that surrounds the island group. It is interesting to note that the notion of a representative flag seems to occur more naturally to the inhabitants of archipelagos than to other territories and in the cases of Shetland and Orkney it’s an impulse further heightened by a distinct Scandinavian cultural legacy. See also http://www.orkneyjar.com/news/flagdebate.htm