The cross is one of the oldest flag symbols still in everyday use. The Nordic cross alone unites five countries into an instantly recognisable family.
Every Nordic cross flag shares that same off-centre cross layout, traced back to Denmark's Dannebrog, but the other four countries didn't all adopt the design at the same time or for the same reasons, and the gaps are bigger than you'd expect.
Sweden's version is the oldest of the copies, tied to a legend from 1157 in which a golden cross was said to have appeared in the sky during a crusade into Finland, though the flag itself as we'd recognise it today wasn't standardised until centuries later. Norway didn't get its current flag until 1821, designed specifically to combine the Danish cross layout (a nod to the long union between the two countries) with the blue of Norway's older flag and the colours of its 1814 constitution. Finland is much more recent again, only formally adopted in 1918, right after Finland gained independence from Russia, with a blue said to represent the country's thousands of lakes against a white background for its snow. Iceland is the newest of all, its cross flag only dating to 1915, adopted while Iceland was still in union with Denmark and finalised as the flag of a fully independent republic in 1944.
So what looks like one unified regional identity is really five countries adopting a shared shape across nearly eight centuries, each for their own local reasons, with the shape being the one constant that tied them all back to Denmark whether they meant it as tribute or just inherited convention.
A pie chart with two colours in a fairly uneven split (one dominant background colour, one smaller cross colour) is a strong hint you're looking at a Nordic country. From there, the exact shades usually narrow it down to one of the five quickly, Sweden's blue and gold, Norway's red-white-blue combination, Finland's blue and white, Iceland's red-white-blue in a different arrangement, and Denmark's red and white.
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