The triskelion — three armoured legs joined at the thigh and spurred at the heel — is the national symbol of the Isle of Man. Its earliest known appearance on the Island is on Cross 92 at Onchan, dated to the ninth century, where it takes the form of a fylfot, a three-legged variant of the rotating symbols common in Norse and Celtic art. Llewellyn Jewitt documented this carving in 1885, connecting it to a wider tradition found across northern Europe.

The symbol entered formal heraldry around 1280, appearing on the Roll of Arms attributed to the period of Alexander III of Scotland’s rule over Mann. Dr John Newton traced its origins from Greek coins through Sicily, where the three legs represented the island’s three headlands, to its adoption as the arms of Mann. The Sicilian connection is not coincidental: the triskelion appears on Sicilian coinage from the third century BC, and the route by which it reached Mann likely followed Mediterranean-to-Atlantic cultural networks.

The direction of the legs has never been formally settled. The medieval Roll of Arms, most stone carvings, and the Laxey Wheel’s stone plinth all show them running clockwise. The modern flag has them running anticlockwise. No record of a decision to reverse the direction has been found. The 1958 Manx postage stamps adopted the leftward version, and Government Circular No. 41/68 (1968) described “the Three Legs armoured and spurred, in the centre of a red field” without specifying direction.

The symbol is inseparable from Manannán mac Lir in Manx tradition. O’Donovan recorded that Manannán “rolled on three legs like a wheel through the mist.” Morrison tells how Saint Patrick drove Manannán and his men from the Island “in the form of three-legged creatures” which “whirled round and round like wheels before the swift wind.” Whether the symbol came from the god, or both from something older, the Manx people who carved three legs on their crosses and their coins knew the story.