Every brand must have a corporate image that can be summarized in a logo. Something that, at a glance, can be directly identified with the product offered or advertised. Logos such as Adidas, Nike, Mercedes Benz ... All of them are part of popular iconography: they are already part of our culture and have come to mean more than the simple product: they offer brand values, whether they are luxury, improvement or physical well-being .
Bluetooth, Viking King and Wireless Connection System
Many of these logos have very basic and simple origins: simply modifying their initial letter, or creating a stroke that symbolizes the use of the product. But there are other logos whose origin is surprising and very curious: this is the case of the Bluetooth logo, the wireless connection created by Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba whose name is also worthy of reference. Bluetooth turns out to be the surname of a Viking king, Harald Bluetooth, whose history bears 'similarities' to the wireless connection he named.
Harald Bluetooth, a Viking King, united parts of Denmark and Norway.
The bluetooth logo is a H and B in old Viking runes. pic.twitter.com/5Z2fYB3kjH
- RΛMIN NΛSIBOV (@RaminNasibov) March 14, 2018
Harald Bluetooth (actually Harald Blatand, a large, dark man who, when he switched to English, underwent the transformation to Bluetooth, blue tooth) was a Viking king who managed to bring together the different Viking , Danish and Norwegian tribes , under the same religion: the Christian. He was king of Denmark and Norway from 958 and 970 respectively. He reigned until his death in 986.
Therefore, the name of Bluetooth is not in vain: Jim Kardach, a computer engineer at Intel, was trying to develop a new wireless connection between laptops and, for this, he enlisted the help of 4 companies: a help that soon began to limp due to the misgivings of the various brands. On the one hand, Ericsson and Nokia did not trust each other; Toshiba and IBM, exactly the same. That is why Kardach had to 'unify' under the same 'religion' (the creation of the wireless connection) to calm things down.
And the logo? Well, the translation of H and B (Haral Bluetooth) into the language of the runes. In the runic alphabet, H comes from Hagall and B comes from Berkana. The union of the two runes, a vertical stick crossed by an X and a pointed B, forms what we all know as the Bluetooth logo.