Bergen Maritime Museum (Norway)

The museum, called Bergens Sjøfartsmuseum in Norwegian, uses as its emblem the white flag with the combination of the X and the year 1921. In the museum's website this X and 1921 appears in blue, but this is due to the overall colour scheme of the web design. In reality the lettering is black in the flag that has been hoisted outside the museum.

The black and white flag is now replaced by another, still with the X and 1921, but now placed on a background of blue with red and white stripes along to upper and lower part of the field. I passed the museum on Friday just as the flag was taken down and took the opportunity to inspect it.

1921 refers to the year the museum was founded, while the letter X refers to the ship identification system introduced in Norway in 1829 whereby ships were required to hoist a flag indicating by a letter their port of registry in combination with a unique number for each ship. The letter for Bergen was X. A number of shipping companies originating from Bergen also fly house flags incorporating the X in the design (for instance Fylkesbaatane.
Jan Oskar Engene, 7 August 2006