Coat of arms of Fredrikstad
Fredrikstad’s arms show a gold bear upright before a gold castle on red; the design is based on a 1610 seal.
Swedish description in the Heraldica record SV
The Swedish description in the Heraldica record is shown separately from the editorial text. It has not been verified as an official blazon. The editorial text follows Fredrikstad Municipality’s historical account.
I rött fält en upprest björn av guld åtföljd till sinister av en borg av guld.
The bear and castle in the arms
Fredrikstad Municipality describes a gold bear standing upright before a gold castle on a red field. The current arms were approved in 1967 and drawn by Hallvard Trætteberg.
The 1610 seal and its imaginary fortress
The municipality says the arms are based on the city’s oldest seal, used for the homage ceremony for Christian IV’s son in 1610. The seal showed a walled fortress with towers, a gate and cannons, with a bear on a bridge in front. Fredrikstad had no fortifications in 1610, and the municipality describes the fortress in the seal as imaginary. For the heraldic arms approved in 1967, the castle was simplified and the bear enlarged.
Sources and image rights
Heraldica record · Image file page on Wikimedia Commons · Wikidata
Wikimedia Commons lists this image as: Public domain
Creator listed on Commons: Own work This W3C-unspecified vector image was created with Inkscape .
More image information
Vexilla is an independent heraldic information service, not an official representative of the municipality. The rights information shown is reported by the image sources and has not been independently verified. A Public Domain label alone does not remove restrictions on using official arms.
Licence information for the Heraldica reference image: CC BY-SA 3.0. Rights information may differ between image sources.
Original by Hallvard Trætteberg, based upon image from caplex.no