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Bouvet Island (Norway)

Bouvetøya

image by António Martins

ISO Code: BV BVT 074
FIPS 10-4 Code: BV
MARC Code: bv
IOC Code: Not Applicable
Status: dependency of Norway

About Bouvet Island
Status of the flag

About Bouvet Island

Located at 54° 26' S and 3° 24' E, Bouvet Island was first discovered on 1 January 1739 by Jean-Baptiste-Charles Bouvet de Lozier. It was rediscovered by the British on 10 December 1825 and named Liverpool Island. Bouvet was annexed by Norway in 1928 and declared a nature preserve in 1971. Total area: 42km². The island is uninhabited.

Status of the flag

Just for the record, the Norwegian dependencies in the Antarctic are Bouvet Island, Peter I Island and Queen Maud Land in Antarctica. The national flag of Norway is the appropriate flag for them.
Jan Oskar Engene, 19 November 1995

Very interesting flag for Bouvet Island, a Norwegian dependency in Antarctica area. I don't understand a word. This might be just another imaginary nation, proposal, or something else.
Valentin Poposki, 8 November 2006

There are on this site some presse relaeases in French and in English. Here is the explanation about what this flag is supposed to stand for, back to March 2002:

"Norway played a key role in helping broker the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians in the early 1990s, but it seems to take a much dimmer view of moves that would grant independence to penguins living under its control. Amazing, but true - the Norwegian Justice Ministry has formally rejected independence for one of the world's most remote islands and the liberation of penguins. The demands came from a group calling itself the Norwegian Support Group for the Liberation of Bouvet Island, inhabited largely by seals and penguins but no humans. Norway claimed the 22.4-square-mile Antarctic island in 1927. The group also demanded the release of penguins in zoos and decent burial for a stuffed one in a museum. Justice Ministry senior official Morten Ruud conceded that he didn't know anything about the group's background. "Obviously it's a joke," he said. "But if someone takes the trouble to write a funny letter, I must be allowed to write a funny one back." In his two-page response, Ruud said he could not grant independence partly because the group claimed to represent only the penguins, the island's minority population when compared with seals. "There is also a strong form of local democracy," he wrote, since the majority seals routinely chase the minority penguins to less desirable real estate. Ruud also said penguins held in Norway did not come from Bouvet Island and were not represented by the group. (AP, 3/11/02) "
This is the first time I hear from an animal micronation !
Olivier Touzeau, 13 November 2006