Looped square

The symbol appears on a number of ancient objects in Northern Europe. It features prominently on a picture stone from Hablingbo, Gotland, Sweden, that was created between 400 and 600 AD. It is also similar to a traditional heraldic emblem called a Bowen knot. In Finland, the symbol was painted or carved on houses and barns, and domestic utensils such as tableware, to protect them and their owners from evil spirits and bad luck. The oldest surviving example is a pair of 1000-year-old (Finnish pre-Christian period) wooden skis decorated with the symbol. The looped square also appears on artifacts of the Mississippian culture of the southeastern United States. While not a true knot, many depictions follow the convention for heraldic knots in that the crossings of the strand obey an under–over pattern. == Traditional names ==

The English names Saint John's Arms, Saint Hannes cross or Saint Hans's Cross as well as the Scandinavian names refer to John the Baptist. The connection is that the celebration of Midsummer's Eve is a major festival in Scandinavia, which in the Julian calendar coincided with the Christian feast celebrating the nativity of Saint John the Baptist, and that the (pagan) symbol was associated with the Midsummer celebrations. == Modern use ==

In modern times, the symbol is commonly found in Belarus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, and Ukraine as an indicator of locations of cultural interest, beginning in Finland in the 1950s and spreading to the other Nordic countries in the 1960s. however, as stated its use for attractions began in Finland, not Sweden, and the symbol is well-represented in Scandinavian artifacts that predate the current castle by centuries. as well as in elementary OS as the symbol for the Super key. The looped square is used in the logos of Belgian telecommunications company Proximus and Canadian software company DistillerSR. == Encoding ==

In Unicode, it is encoded at , in the block Miscellaneous Technical. == Gallery ==