• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Did Vikings Have Tattoos? Real Norse Body Art Is Filled With Mystery

March 17, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Viking-inspired tattoos with Norse imagery and runes have become somewhat in vogue in the era of Pinterest-inspired body art, but did the Vikings actually have tattoos? There’s no solid archaeological evidence that tattoos were common in the Viking age since it’s rare for skin to remain intact for centuries. Nevertheless, we know from written sources that some Norsemen may have been fans of body art. 

What did Viking tattoos look like?

One of the best accounts of inked-up Norsemen comes from Ahmad ibn Fadlan, a 10th-century Muslim traveler who was sent from Baghdad to make contact with the king of the Volga Bulgars, an area of modern-day western Russia and Ukraine. Around this time, the area was home to a group of people known as the Volga Vikings, conquerors and traders who had settled in the area from Scandinavia. 

Advertisement

In his description one of of these tribes, known as the Rus, Fadlan wrote:

“Each man has an axe, a sword, and a knife and keeps each by him at all times. The swords are broad and grooved, of Frankish sort. Every man is tattooed from fingernails to neck with dark green (or green or blue-black) trees, figures, etc.”

“I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blonde and ruddy,” he added.

Although the rest of the description was less flattering, describing the Rus as the “filthiest of God’s creatures”. 

Advertisement

There is some debate around whether the Arabic translation of the word “tattoo” is accurate or whether it describes some other form of body decoration. Nevertheless, it’s safe to assume that many Rus men would decorate their bodies with some kind of dark green and blue pigment that depicted figures, just as the Arabic account explains. 

It’s also important to remember that the Rus were just one group of Vikings and there’s no telling whether they were representative of the whole culture. Since they were largely separated from the predominate Viking cultures of Scandinavia, it’s far from certain. 

As for physical evidence, there is next to none. Skin degrades very easily once a person dies and rarely survives centuries of burial unless it’s preserved under very certain conditions, such as mummification or being frozen in permafrost.

Unfortunately, no Vikings have ever been found in such conditions. However, there are a number of examples of people in Europe from the distant past who have been discovered covered in tattoos. 

Advertisement

In 1991, the body of a 5,300-year-old glacier mummy was discovered by hikers in the Ötztal Alps near the Italian-Austrian border. Named Ötzi, researchers quickly realized that the 45-year-old man’s body was caked in over 60 tattoos. It’s believed the skin inks had some kind of spiritual or medicinal intention, designed to ease all kinds of ailments. 

Ötzi, of course, was not a Viking. However, this one-off discovery does possibly hint that the practice of tattooing in pre-modern Europe is long and broad. Paired with the written account by Fadlan, it could suggest that the image of Vikings being tall, tatted warriors perhaps wasn’t far wrong.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Soccer-Guardiola in the dark over availability of Brazilian players
  2. Doctors scale rockslides, invoke gods to vaccinate Himalayan villages
  3. Malaysia’s central bank to launch alternative reference rate
  4. Moldova replaces prosecutor general

Source Link: Did Vikings Have Tattoos? Real Norse Body Art Is Filled With Mystery

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • “I Wasn’t Prepared For The Sheer Number Of Them”: Cave Of Mummified Never-Before-Seen Eyeless Invertebrates Amazes Scientists
  • Asteroid Day At 10: How The World Is More Prepared Than Ever To Face Celestial Threats
  • What Happened When A New Zealand Man Fell Butt-First Onto A Powerful Air Hose
  • Ancient DNA Confirms Women’s Unexpected Status In One Of The Oldest Known Neolithic Settlements
  • Earth’s Weather Satellites Catch Cloud Changes… On Venus
  • Scientists Find Common Factors In People Who Have “Out-Of-Body” Experiences
  • Shocking Photos Reveal Extent Of Overfishing’s Impact On “Shrinking” Cod
  • Direct Fusion Drive Could Take Us To Sedna During Its Closest Approach In 11,000 Years
  • Earth’s Energy Imbalance Is More Than Double What It Should Be – And We Don’t Know Why
  • We May Have Misjudged A Fundamental Fact About The Cambrian Explosion
  • The Shoebill Is A Bird So Bizarre That Some People Don’t Even Believe It’s Real
  • Colossal’s “Dire Wolves” Are Now 6 Months Old – And They’ve Doubled In Size
  • How To Fake A Fossil: Find Out More In Issue 36 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • Is It True Earth Used To Take 420 Days To Orbit The Sun?
  • One Of The Ocean’s “Most Valuable Habitats” Grows The Only Flowers Known To Bloom In Seawater
  • World’s Largest Digital Camera Snaps 2,104 New Asteroids In 10 Hours, Mice With 2 Dads Father Their Own Offspring, And Much More This Week
  • Simplest Explanation For “Anomalous” Signals Coming From Underneath Antarctica Ruled Out
  • “Lizard Shampoo” And Pagan Texts Suggest “Dark Age” Medicine Wasn’t So Dark After All
  • Japanese Macaques May Mourn Their Dead – As Long As They’re Not Maggot-Infested
  • This Is What You’d Hear If You Listened To Voyager’s Golden Record NASA Sent To Interstellar Space
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version