Editing Molde Municipality (section)

==Coat of arms==
The [[coat of arms]] was granted on 29 June 1742. The informal [[blazon]] is ''"a water spouting whale, which drives a barrel in front of itself"'' ({{langx|no|en vannsprutende hvalfisk, som driver en tønne for seg}}). The arms have a blue [[field (heraldry)|field]] (background) and the [[charge (heraldry)|charge]] is a whale and barrel floating on the ocean waves. It also has a [[mural crown]] above the [[Escutcheon (heraldry)|escutcheon]] since the municipality includes a town. The exact design of the coat of arms is not formally depicted in law, so it has varied some over the centuries. The arms symbolize a [[whale]] chasing [[herring]] into a barrel, based on an old myth that the whales (guided by God) chased the schools of herring into the fjords at certain times. It also portrays the city's founding industries of herring fisheries and timber exports. Molde was never a whaling port, but the unusually bountiful fisheries in the early 1740s alleviated the city's suffering during a major famine. The sighting of whales, usually pods of [[orca]], was commonly held to be the start of the spring herring fisheries. The municipal flag is a white flag with the coat of arms in the centre.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Civic heraldry of Norway - Norske Kommunevåpen |url=https://www.heraldry-wiki.com/heraldrywiki/index.php?title=Molde |access-date=2023-04-14 |publisher=Heraldry of the World}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Molde, Møre og Romsdal (Norway) |url=https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/no-15-02.html |access-date=2023-04-14 |website=Flags of the World}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Kvernberg |first=Anders |title=Moldes byvåpen fra lakksegl til dataskjerm |publisher=Romsdalsmuseets årbok |year=2012 |page=160ff}}</ref>

Moldesangen ({{lit|The Song of Molde}}) is the semi-official anthem. It was written by Palle Godtfred Olaus Dørum (1818–1886) and composed by Karl Groos (1789–1861), supposedly in 1818, and is the same tune used the anthem of the German federal state [[Mecklenburg-Vorpommern]].