Bibliography (M)

Last modified: 2000-01-21 by antonio martins
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• Vexillological bibliography (M)

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Atle Grahl-Madsen (1922-1990) was a prominent scholar in the field on international law, specialising in the status of refugees. A collection of articles written in his honour was published last year. The title may suggest Grahl-Madsen's professional interests as a jurist: The Living law of nations: essays on refugees, minorities, indigenous peoples and the human rights of other vulnerable groups in memory of Atle Grahl-Madsen. The book is edited by Gudmundur Alfredsson and Peter Mcalister-Smith (Kehl: Engel, 1996). The name of the second editor may be recognised by some of you. Dr. Mcalister-Smith has written on flags of the Red Cross and Red Crescent for the Flag Bulletin [tfb], and contributed an article on the flag of the United Nations [mcs86] to the Nordic Journal of International Law when Grahl-Madsen was the editor of that journal.

Grahl-Madsen became Cand.jur. from the University of Oslo in 1947, and received his doctorate from the same university in 1967 on a thesis entitled “The Status of Refugees in International Law”. From 1948 to 1949 he worked as a Resettlement Officer for the International Refugee Organisation in Germany. From 1952 to 1972 he had his own law firm in Bergen, while continuing to work on the status of refugees. He was a consultant to international organisations and governments. From 1967 to 1976 he was Principal Lecturer at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen. From 1978 to 1980 he was Professor of Law at the University of Uppsala and Director of the Swedish Institute of International Law. Finally, from 1980 until his death he was Professor of Law at the University of Bergen, Norway. He also taught in the USA and Germany.

In the field of flag research, Grahl-Madsen's most important contribution was his work on Norwegian flag legislation. He proposed to revise the legislation concerning Norwegian flags, and put forward an new system of flags. For this purpose he produced a systematic collection of current and historical legislation concerning flags in Norway, a work that is still extremely valuable as a work of reference. He also wrote on Norwegian municipal flags and the legal status of the Aland Islands flag. Another interesting piece is his “(Draft) international flag standard” (Bergen, 1973 [mad73a] and 1974 [mad74]) «comprising the designation, classification, sizes, and colours of flags.» To the Flag Bulletin he contributed articles on the relationship of flags to heraldry and on flag usage in Norway (published after his death).

Judging from other things he published, Grahl-Madsen's interests were diverse. He wrote works such as “Scangrid: geographical grid, polar grid, country codes, city codes, alpha and alphanumerical codes, new standard calendar” (Bergen, 1986), “A new standard calendar” (Bergen, 1984), “UNICODE 4: Alphabetical and numerical country codes” (Bergen, 1974), “Uniform vehicle registration system - EUROCODE” (Bergen, 1971), and he also wrote pieces on the standardisation of ranks of officers in the NATO countries. Clearly, he was a person with a high sense of order, a man who liked to see things properly and orderly arranged.

One might say that this interest for systematisation is reflected in some of his designs for new US state flags. Note, for instance, the way things are orderly and neatly stacked and arranged in the proposed flags for Connecticut, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Another striking feature of his proposals is the use of unusual colours, orange and purple, often together in the same design.

Grahl-Madsen's “A Contribution to New Glory” [mad75] was his submission to the “New Glory” project launched by the Director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art on the occasion of the Bicentennial of the American Revolution. The idea was to «foster better standards of design» for the flags of states, counties, cities, etc. Grahl-Madsen presented design ideas for 24 new state flags. I believe his compendium of proposed flags was also presented at the International Congress of Vexillology in Washington.

Jan Oskar Engene, 18 Jul 1997

Matheson was a key figure in Canada's divisive flag debate of 1964, and his book gives a detailed insider's view of how Canada got its current National Flag. I read the book in paper form about a year ago, and I really enjoyed it. I heartily recommend it to everybody interested in flags.
Dean Tiegs, 03 Mar 1999

This book is very good. Only minor error are detected (many of them related by blue shades). Jaume Ollé, 11 Oct 1999

Not a bad little book: shows the flags and arms of every nation and the flags of all dependencies in colour, plus B&W drawings of the British dependencies’ arms (added by Crampton?). The text is middling in quality — one or two paragraphs on each country — and is biased towards the flags, with little information on the coats of arms. It has a few idiosyncracies coming from it originating from the Soviet bloc: West Berlin for instance is listed separately from West Germany as a “statutory city”.

It includes some flags not often encountered in books, including all the UN specialist organisations’ flags and the flags of no less than thirteen national vexillological organisations. It is the only book I can recall seeing that has the (unofficial) flag of Wake Island.

You may have this listed already as a work by William Crampton, as the jacket only credits him. However it is clearly stated on the title page that Crampton was editing a work by another author.

Roy Stilling, 28 Sep 1999

I dont think that the black and white drawings of the British dependencies’ arms were added by Crampton. At least the second edition [mch87] of the czech original includes quite a few of them: Gibraltar, Hongkong, St. Helena, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Falklands and Pitcairn. And these are not by far the only in text illustrations in this book.
António Martins, 20 Nov 1999

While it has a lot of vexi-lore it sorely lacks images as in Pedersen’s books.
Jarig Bakker, 29 Sep 1999

A very good book, remakably "serious", considering the time and place of edition. The flag images, f.i., are shown not only in the correct ratios (something often forgotten in similar books), but these are also specified near each image.
António Martins, 31 Oct 1999

In this book, the color illustrations (flags and coats of arms of independent countries and of some dependencies) are in sets of pages separated from the explaining texts. Among these, though, there are some more (black and white) illustrations, depicting coats of arms, construction sheets, and similar details.
António Martins, 20 Nov 1999

Very basic children's type book released for last year's centennial.
Gene Duque, 25 Sep 1999

Contains a plate with flags of the states, and an accompanying list with descriptions of flags.
Zeljko Heimer, 1996-09-16

A very interesting booklet.
David Prothero, 08 Dec 1999