Coat of arms of Härnösand
Härnösand’s arms show a black beaver holding a black pike in its mouth on a silver field.
Swedish description in the Heraldica record
I fält av silver en svart bäver hållande i munnen en svart gädda.
This is the Swedish description in the Heraldica record. How it was composed and whether it is an official blazon have not been independently verified here. The editorial text distinguishes registry information from municipal or local interpretations.
Designers
- Vladimir A. Sagerlund
Registration and history
- 1586: Used as a seal as of
- 24 April 1931: Royal confirmation on
- 10 November 1989: Registered at the National Board of Patents and Registration
The arms and their description
The Swedish description in the Heraldica record shows a black beaver holding a black pike in its mouth on a silver shield.
Source: Heraldica record 3342
Background in local sources
Härnösand Municipality’s nature guide says King John III decided on the arms’ motif in 1586. According to the guide, the beaver was chosen because it was common in northern Sweden, while the pike represented a tax levied on fishing. These are the municipality guide’s explanations; the unusual pairing does not change the registry description.
Heraldic elements
The heraldic elements are identified using HERO, a heraldry ontology published through Finland's Finto service. It provides structured terminology for describing coats of arms and their components. The list describes the structure of the arms, not the symbolic meaning of its elements.
- escutcheon
- field
- Argent
- lucy
- Sable
- beaver
- unpartitioned
Sources and image rights
Heraldica / National Archives of Finland · Wikidata
Image licence: CC BY-SA 3.0
Image source and credit: National Archives of Sweden / Vladimir Sagerlund
Original image. The image has been resized and converted to WebP. The derivative retains the original image’s licence.
