In 1569, Åland had been given to the Swedish queen dowager Katarina Stenbock as a fief and was awarded a provincial coat of arms displaying two roe deer on a field strewn with nine roses.

[5] Sweden had ceded much of its eastern territory, including the Åland Islands, to Russia in 1809, which became the Grand Duchy of Finland, but the heraldic switch-up was not discovered until the 1940s.

During a heraldic revision in 1944, the Swedish National Heraldry Office (Riksheraldikerämbetet) discovered that a mistake had been committed.

Heraldic authorities in Finland were notified of the error but ultimately decided not make any changes and not to adopt the coat of arms originally intended for Åland (with the two roe deer and nine Finnish roses), as they had long since granted Åland the arms which had been usurped from Öland.

This decision made it necessary for Swedish heralds to once again alter the coat of arms for Öland, to avoid further confusion.