Coat of arms of Molde
Molde says the water-spouting whale in its arms represents herring being driven into the fjords; the old city arms became the new municipality’s arms in 2020.
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 Molde Municipality’s own account of its arms.
I blått fält en svart naturlig val flytande på tre vågsträngar av silver och uppstigande från dem en tunna av guld till dexter.
The whale and herring in the fjords
Molde Municipality describes the whale in its arms as spouting water and connects the motif with herring being driven into the fjords. In the municipality’s own historical account, herring had helped save Romsdal from famine, and people believed the whale drove the fish towards shore.
From the 1742 city arms to the present municipality
According to the municipality, Molde received its town privileges in 1742, and the city arms were drawn and taken into use that year. When Midsund, Molde and Nesset formed a new municipality on 1 January 2020, the new municipality chose Molde’s original city arms as its municipal arms.
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.
SVG is own work, based upon image from caplex.no.