Denmark's coat of arms includes an elephant

Denmark's coat of arms was in the news this past week because it has been redesigned.  

The Danish king has shocked some historians by changing the royal coat of arms to more prominently feature Greenland and the Faroe Islands – in what has also been seen as a rebuke to Donald Trump.

Less than a year since succeeding his mother, Queen Margrethe, after she stood down on New Year’s Eve 2023, King Frederik has made a clear statement of intent to keep the autonomous Danish territory and former colony within the kingdom of Denmark.

For 500 years, previous Danish royal coats of arms have featured three crowns, the symbol of the Kalmar Union between Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which was led from Denmark between 1397 and 1523. They are also an important symbol of its neighbour Sweden.

But in the updated version, the crowns have been removed and replaced with a more prominent polar bear [upper blue arrow] and ram than previously, to symbolise Greenland and the Faroe Islands respectively.

There is some discussion of the geopolitics at The Guardian, but what interested me was the presence of an elephant [lower blue arrow] dangling from the coat of arms.  Had to look it up.  Turns out that is the Order of the Elephant.

The Order of the Elephant (Danish: Elefantordenen) is a Danish order of chivalry and is Denmark's highest-ranked honour. It has origins in the 15th century, but has officially existed since 1693, and since the establishment of constitutional monarchy in 1849, is now almost exclusively used to honour royalty and heads of state. 

The elephant and castle design derives from the howdah, a carriage that is mounted in the back of an elephant. This type of carriage was mostly utilized in the Indian subcontinent, and the Danish knew about and thus had the ability to adopt this design since they ruled certain parts of India as part of their small colonial empire. The unfamiliar Indian howdah has been replaced in this instance by a familiar European castle, although the Indian rider has been kept on the elephant.

Recipients of this award include Tycho Brahe, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Niels Bohr, Sir Winston Churchill, and Nelson Mandela.