During Thirty Years’ War thousands of silken flags were produced for Swedish army, but just a few of them survive: most of the surviving ones are those which enemy took in battle and brought home as trophies, to be shown in churches and palaces. Later, some of them ended up in museums. Researching flags of this period is based largely on paintings and written descriptions. We know for sure that swedish army didn’t have any single flag standard, as the flags were usually made in the regiments according to the tastes of the commanding officers and of which materials were available. Native Swedish regiments might have had slightly simpler flags than the continental mercenary regiments. There are no evidence of flag colours being systematically coordinated with the uniform colours or the provincial colours even though there might have been that kind of efforts or plans.

German monk Reginbaldus Möhner painted dozens of water-colour portraits of flags, belonging to Swedish regiments occupying and passing through Augsburg in 1634, for his chronicle. Amongst these paintings there are four flags of Kaspar Ermes’s Finnish (Savolax) infantry, which are company flags in all propability. Every one of the four flags have been reduced to mere rags hanging from a flagpole, with no hint of the pattern of the flag. Silken flags truly were not very durable in the battlefield and on the other hand new flags were often not issued until the regiment was reorganized: so in the long campaigns, many units were marching under tattered flags.

GARS uses blue and black flag with golden wreath painted on both sides and on the middle the Savolax coat of arms on the other and the king’s monogram on the other side. This is a speculative reconstruction made after Möhner’s paintings, general flag fashion of the period, other Swedish infantry flags and later period flags of Savolax infantry regiment.