In times of crisis people tend to gather around a leader – the so called “rally’round the flag effect”. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be no exception. Studies of Denmark and Sweden show that a “rally’round the flag”-effect occurred in both countries during the spring of 2020. Because the two countries used different strategies to combat the virus at the time, the cause of the quickly increased support for the national leaders is unclear. This essay examines one possible contributory reason: nationalist rhetoric. By analyzing Danish and Swedish national leaders’ framing of the pandemic, using banal nationalism to highlight the prosaic and implied aspects of nationalism, I show that nationalist rhetoric is present, both in the definition of the problem and as the proposed solutions. In both cases an emphasis on the typical national qualities is shown. In conclusion, the findings in this essay point to the fact that further studies in this yet to be fully explored field of studies are of interest, especially from a perspective of democracy.