The Meanings And Symbolism Behind Viking Tattoos
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- čas přidán 15. 10. 2022
- Both history and conventional wisdom hold that Scandinavians and their descendants adorned their bodies with symbols, sigils, and staves - all with specific meanings and importance. Runes were also used to convey information. The characters of the Younger Futhark system were prominent during the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries and are most closely connected with the so-called Viking Age. They have their origins in the aptly named Elder Futhark and gave way to derivatives like Anglo-Saxon runes.
But what did these sigils and runes look like? And what did they mean?
To read more about Viking Tattoo Facts on the list, go here:
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#vikings #tattoo #weirdhistory - Zábava
Suggestion: What was it like to be a Viking kid? Did they go to school? What games did they play?
They played kill the Christian
great idea for a video!
Oooo thats a good one!!
They trained their dragons
Invicta made a video about this
Yeah I don't know. I am a Dane and descendant of Vikings and I cannot help but to think that much of this Viking tattoo talk is flavored by the current tattoo craze as opposed to reality. As mentioned there was only ONE historical account of Viking tattoos. Finally and for the love of God can someone.... anyone.. please tell the Minnesota Vikings that no... Viking helmets did not have horns!
👏
definitely influenced by the current fashion of wearing tattous and not based on reality , otherwise it would've been mentioned by a lot of baffled Franks or Englishmen
who knows what ibn Fadlan saw on the bodies of the Rus and maybe it was just a lot of make up for a special occasion......Al Tartushi mentioned the habit of them applying some light make up, when he visited nearby Hedeby
I know otzi is unrelated to Vikings but bear with me here. He had a lot of tattoos even by today's standards so I wonder how widespread tattooing was throughout the European continent during the Viking age? Could it have been so common that it didn't bear mentioning? That would explain the one account mentioning it if they were from a society that didn't commonly use tattoos. I know this is often an issue with historical texts where they never mention things that are considered common knowledge and when that knowledge is lost there's no record left. Todd's workshop deals with this a lot where it comes to armor and armor making.
Not much to fight over. No one knows for sure. Maybe more than O N E had. I'm pretty sure there was. Why shouldn't they? Tattoos have been around in every civilization around the world. Even Ötzi had
@@osvagt the tattoos Otzi had are hardly comparable to modern ones
simple dots and lines on body sections that most likely caused him some pain and assumingly part of a healing ritual
show me one of the ancient greek, roman, byzantine etc. vase paintings, frescos, mosaics that depicts a tattooed person - thousands of them are detailed enough to make out minor features in the appearance of the characters and no one is tattooed.
the closest you get to tattooed folks in the western hemisphere are the body painted ancient brits and this bewildered the Romans so much that they refered to the unromanized Northerners simply as "the Painted"
several byzantine sources describing members of their prized pan-northern varangian guard in great detail, but in several centuries not one of them as tattooed
no muslim accounts of strange "Franks" looking like henna painted arabian brides neither
for normal people in the West (or North) simply not a thing until very recently
3:00 it is a proven fact that the vegvisir was put together in the 1800s - no viking association whatsoever
Can you please provide some evidence for that?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegv%C3%ADsir
Thank you for this. I don’t claim to be an expert, but it’s always weirded me out when I see modern depictions of Vikings with very heavy ink, as no source I’ve read mentioned it to such an extent. I also like the fact that some of the most famous symbols associated with them are not quite as old as people believe. I think one of the “staves“ only dates to about the 17th century.
I think it’s a misunderstanding from when the trend for (what was called) Viking or Celtic knotwork, and other Norse patterns became massive in tattooing, back in the 90s (the ‘tribal’ trend). Over time, it’s gotten confused, and now we think “Vikings” had “tribal” tattoos. I guess they keep doing it bc it looks good in movies 🤷🏽♀️
@@creatrixZBD I guess that makes sense. I’ve always loved Celtic knotwork as a design motif, but perhaps it wasn’t quite as prevalent in the actual culture, at least not the way we imagine it was.
Yes, that compas one is much younger.
@@johnDukemaster When we were in Iceland, my father bought a shirt with that symbol. I tried to give a him bit of background on it, but not sure if he was fully paying attention at the time (or if he remembers today) 🤷🏽♀
This takes me back to 1999 in high school, when me and my boyfriend exchanged notes between classes written completely in Runic. He taught it to me, but I have no idea where he got it. Years later, I’ve found much of it was wrong, but no matter, it served it’s purpose… preventing teachers from reading our love notes if confiscated in class.
love it, sounds really cool. do you still remember it?
@@trevorjoneill707 Yep! We used it A LOT. Like 3 lettered a day, a page long at least (what did we have to say?!? 🤷🏻♀️) for 3 years.
@@RavenFilms you must have said most of it before and during class
@@trevorjoneill707 We didn’t have any classes together and there was never any time to talk between classes, so everything was in writing. But even still, how much is going in school that requires that much to write about that many times a day…? I laugh now as how dumb and probably very boring all those letters must have been. I have them all in a box somewhere, I should look for them an read a few for a good laugh.
to read up on them sounds fun, pour a nice glass of wine and enjoy yourself
I’d love a video on the Pictish tribes and their artwork.
even further back, and less information.
@@GavTatu I know, there’s next to nothing on them. Pretty much just the eye witness accounts of those who fought against them. But I find them super interesting since I can supposedly trace my lineage back to them, on my dads side.
And the Inuit
I would enjoy learning more about the Berserkers!
I would actually love to learn about viking marriages and wedding traditions!
Var was the Viking goddess whose name is where we get the term vow, they would take oaths to be betrothed and make their union known, also the bride puts a hammer on her lap in part of the ceremony to symbolize Thor's hammer which can destroy, but is also a fertility symbol...I think I did a video about pagan handfasting ceremonies, check it out if you are interested. :)
A+ video!
LOVE IT! So much meaning behind the tattoos!
Someone needs to do a episode on the narrator of weird history..
6:11 I used to have Reebok Blacktops, they were DA BOMB!
Reebok Pumps are so iconic too!
this was a cool video, learned something new today. cheers🍻
Great video, thank you!! 💪☺️
Great video!
You should do the history of all languages. Starting with our alphabet, I always liked the ones I learned abt
good job, you covered basic runes and also used references to the elder and younger farthlar runes.
Ahmad ibn Fadlan -> Antonia Banderas -> 13th Warrior. Good flick.
Very good indeed !!
The pronounciation cracks me up everytime 🤣
I’d love a video on Viking weddings. I’m sure there has to be some historical records about these types of weddings, if they happened. (Unless you guys already did this video)
I actually reached out to the Gothi (pagan priest) in Iceland and he told me about a ceremony where the wife gave the husband the ancestral sword and the husband gave the wife a new sword as a wedding gift. It was to strike him down if he was unfaithful and to have a new ancestral sword. I actually got married this way, we didn’t have ancestral swords but we got some replicas. 😅
@@nummins8678
Friggin LOL!
"Why are you savages attacking us?"
"We had to flee our homeland."
"Why?"
"Because our wives were attacking us."
@@spiffygonzales5899 💀🤣
There have been weddings, after christianisation.
Now all the American whites are gonna get a bunch of Celtic tattoos claiming to be Norse! Lol
Nope just the kool-aid haired soy latte liberals democrats but they all identify as black Supremist so it's OK
I mean it’s essentially the same thing if British people did it since ya know we came from there
Loved this topic! Good job 🖤✌️
actually straight lines on a tattoo are surprisingly hard to pull of and make them look right.
Actually, there have been multiple burial bodies found with tattoos
Yes, but non in Scandinavia
Please talk about Richard Petty Vs David Pearson in the Daytona 500 for Timeline 1976
Good job with the pronunciation of these very difficult words. My husband is Finnish and I still haven't mastered alot of the sounds
I had noticed he seemed to have the insanely difficult sounding pronunciations down so well but my knowledge of old Norse language is based almost entirely on obsessive southern California teenagers in the 90s figuring it all out through library books and pbs films.
Glad to know they weren't too far off.
Wait.. so my tat of Elmer Fudd singing 'Kill the wabbit' isn't historical? Aw, man...
I would love to see a video on the Viking portage across USA and sailing to Hawaii, where it is said Eric the Red died, and his family were known as Na Ehu (the Red) and were in the lineage of King Kamehameha.
Actually, Polynesians from Hawaii portaged across the USA to Greenland, Iceland and Norway. The Norwegian royal family descend from these Polynesian voyagers.
@@shanemcdowall That makes sense knowing they had help from aliens.
@@karenishness1 Yes, the Lizard people helped the Polynesians to colonise Scandinavia.
@@shanemcdowall Source?
@@karenishness1 "The Beginners Book of Horse Shit" by I.P. Freely (1981). Which is where I assume, you got your story about Eric the Red travelling to Hawaii.
Vegvisir was not around during the viking age, Its an Icelandic Christian symbol
so not an episode about tattoos... but learning about runes is cool
Thanks for this! ⬆ #WeirdHistory #Tattoo #Vikings
I think it's interesting that a culture which is generally perceived as being violent has so many ruins devoted to things like enlightenment or higher reasoning
Only a low percentage of the north men were actually viking lol most stayed home and farmed. Hollywood kind of ran away with the viking thing
Scandinavia was a very developed are and is still one of the most developed ares in the world. The Norse haven’t forgotten their roots 😂
Runes where a writing system. The whole idea that runes stand for anything other than a letter representing a sound is pure fantasy with no basis in reality or evidence to support it.
If anyone starts talking about the mystical meanings of runes or magical properties, you can immediately disregard anything they have to say, because they haven't spent a single minute doing actual research.
Love the backround music
The Vegvisir is actually dated to 1860 and is not a Norse and Viking symbol. It’s a Temple of Solomon seal symbol.
8:30 Nice Douglas Adams reference.
Random but very nice inclusion of Judas Priest"s bassist Ian Hill as the heavy metal guitarist!
Here's our video on Viking tattoos:
Oh, there's little evidence they had em
So here's a video about the modern day meanings of Runes instead
Finally my peoples get a proper video! Proud Norseman here, my family hails from Nordfjord! 🇳🇴😁 (in answer to the video, I’d love a video on Viking agriculture or trade, seeing as they were a mostly agriculture/trade based society, rather than the misinterpreted warfare and pillaging and plundering stereotype)
Danish?
Brother lives in Stavanger nice place man, mind you like Switzerland where my other brother lives more
@@sailormoon2937 Norwegian! But I welcome, accept and love all my Scandinavian brothers and sisters! We are all one ❤️
@@adrianfleming3437 I’ve always wanted to visit Switzerland! The mountains and forests are simply breathtaking 😵💫 Stavanger is stunning as well 😁 the colored roofs are such an aesthetic
Half dane and half swede here!
Dang! No Timeline 1976 this week :(
damn… I guess no timeline this week!
Unusual wedding traditions in history!
Suggestion: the relationship between France and USA and how the construction of the Statue of Liberty happened and it’s effects?
You should do a video on what life was like for skogarmaor
0:07 I used to make Sigils, very fun and cool!
There should be a Sigilsmith...
"The Lover Of Murder" Vikings really enjoyed their work didn't they ! Wish I did ....
Vikings. The Madlads of Europe
What was inner relationships between Vikings like? Like did Vikings respect their wives and children? Was being married common? Or was there more just raping and pillaging? What are some societal traditions among Vikings?
Fadlan's account of the Rus is so interesting.
I like the tattoos of the man on the video cover. What keywords would you use to look up that style?
I would love to hear about Viking marriahes, food, art & how some of them ended up settling is different places in the world where they had previously invaded (example - the UK).
Food: mostly fish, vegetables and grains in all variations.
Marriage: No marriage before christianisation.
And tip from someone, who have serious knowledge about vikings learn from archeologists, don't believe the stuff what his guy tell in this video. It's somewhere between "fake news" and romanticism and (right ing) esoteric bs.
Do one on "canaanite" tattoos please💯
I don't think runes were used but maybe animals and other symbology.
it would be cool if they said the fonts of where they got the meaning of the runes
"Wild Pansies" would be a great name for a soy-based motorcycle gang
Vegvísir and the helm of awe are not Viking age symbols, nor are they runes. They came about much later as Scandinavian magick symbols. At least he said it's unclear about the vegvísir. Also, Teiwaz isn't associated with Týr, he is Týr. It's the old Germanic/Gothic name for the same god. Just like Wodanaz, Ingwaz, Thunraz.
Bearded raider with an axe..... transitions to Ian Hill 0:52 who doesn't sport tattoos lol Zakk Wylde perhaps.
My next recommended video is Dr Jackson Crawford's "Norse Symbols and how little we know" lol
czcams.com/video/lHbD8ko-tU0/video.html
These are Rune characters. I had no idea how to pronounce them lol
If you think about it they match up to the charkas colors and meanings in Hindu or whatever yoga people are loland meanings of the stages of the tree of life in kabbalah
Actual heathens coming in like “right, right, wrong, right, wtf are you talking about?, right”
Most off them has nothing to do with the Viking age. First they are not Viking tattooed.
Second most of the symbols are mordern symbols like the vegvisir which is from 1860
Could do you a video about life inside of prison in the 1800s?
“Also describes every heavy metal guitarist”
*pictures Ian Hill*
Can you do an aztec one please
Some of this runes isnt "viking" and most dont have those meanings you say.
Awesome
Please make a video about Emma Goldman!
Yes!
I got the Valknut tattoo'd on my wrist in highschool
That means you are dedicated to Odin and you invite him to take your life whenever he needs it
Did you understand what it meant then? I remember being 17 & getting my first tattoo - definitely was not 1/4 that cool 😂 & got it covered at about 25 when I grew up a bit more
Not sure how old ya are, and absolutely no disrespect meant! I'd never even heard of this stuff seriously until (of course) the tv show (outside of a gross fam member no one claims that spent time in the pen)
@@brandonrunyan2546 my cousin is big into Vikings and Norse mythology and I looked up to him a lot so naturally I became obsessed with them as well
Where's this weeks Timeline video, y'all messed up
"Johnny 92 yrs old"🤣🤣🤣🤣
Nice
*2:49** i have an edc bronze coin of that one...along with five others that i typically carry...yeah i need a lot of pockets to do that*
12:37 I once received a PM message from Ice, she is from the original American Gladiators.
Where my Norwegian team whooop whooop
Skål!
What is the name of the ship in the thumbnail?
Maahn i buy beer specifically for the Timeline videos, I want my money back!
I have a sun wheel tattoo. I would like to get tattoos of each if the four seasons
2:50 The creators of Garmin graduated from the grad school at the University of Missouri.
I might not know what these tattoos mean but they are freaking awesome!! 😊
Futhark is pretty neat.
Galdrastafir are from the year 1860 and no viking symbols.
*shows a picture of a heavy metal guitarist with no tattoos
At 4:09 look closely at the belt, what sign do you see?
I would think one dot • is much more easy to tattoo than a l or am I wrong?
You missed 1976....
@Mr. King nah, if you have a schedule stick to it.
@Mr. King you must be new here
How about a video on the historic origins of body piercing?
Dumb idea then. Dumb idea now.
These videos are just the best. 👌
As a northern Englishwoman of highly likely Viking ancestry, I really appreciate the work gone into this and also getting the pronunciations right...a massively fascinating and enjoyable video...thanks!
Hello from the Viking North as well!
There's no "likely" about it. If you were born on Britain to non-immigrant parents, you have Norse ancestry. They are just part of the British admixture at this point.
@@thomaswillard6267 because we were invaded by Romans and also the French, and I haven't paid for a 23 and me test I cannot say for 100% certain as I could have any of those family lines instead, but that's why I suspect the high likelihood is Viking but not for definite.
@@Rosiebeatle don't be baited into giving away your genetic data and just look in the mirror or your family records
after the Romans ENGland was also very succesfully invaded by the Angles from my region which had their continental leftovers mixed up with Danes, Saxons and Frisians who then invaded again....my village was founded by "Pirates"....
if you have ancestry from the Danelaw, you have some viking blood running through your venes for sure
Viking ancestry? How do you know you don't have heritage from a Norse farmer rather than a Norse raider? Viking was just a job, after all.
He really practiced speaking the words properly...kah! Kah!
It looks like tattoo's used to remind us of something important originate from Odin carving and staining the runes that he needed to remember wisdom.
Fadhlan never said "tatooed" . He used a word that means "covered in color" - which might have meant tatooed but could as well mean painted on coclor - he uses the same words that are used to describe oriental body paintings.
Forthermore the Rus at that tme were already a mixture of Scandinavian and indigenous people of the Dnjepr/Wolga region. They are about as pure Viking as US-citizens are pure English.
The staves symbol is was invented in the late middle-ages and has nothing to do with vikings.
Furthermore the inividual runes are sound symbols. They might have another meaning but were never used as a representative of concepts. X might mean gift but it was never written as a representative of the word. Vikings wuld have written the word gift.
Vegvisir isnt norse. It originated in 1800s Iceland.
"Describes every Heavy Metal guitarist"
Shows bass player
Or every line cook that's had to burn one steak too many.
I member big Johnson t shirts. They were hilarious
Those damn member berries taste good lol
Wow I can't believe you referenced Big Johnson tshirts I totally use to wear those in highschool hahahahah can't believe we actually got away with wearing them to school?
Strange that child lovers use triangles as their symbol.
Triangles were patches forced on gays and Jews by the Nazi party. Pink for gays, yellow for Jews. No one chose them for themselves. The pink one was reclaimed in the 80s by gay people to control their own narrative. Just adults. No children.
@Mr. King they do
some of the symbols was created in 1860 or something like that, created by some guys who wrote a book and wanted something new, so he made them.
met someone in USA and their last name was Bjorkheimer Which i take as Realm of birch trees? idk sounded cool tho
bjork has a vegvisir tattoo on her left arm 🤓
Uhhhhh where’s timeline??
@Mr. King Bruh, seriously. Why are you here.
*not really into getting tatts...maybe using a sharpie or magic marker but nothing involving the momentary damage to my epidermis covering various parts of my anatomy*
I believe they mistranslated the hammer's name there's still alot that archeologists don't understand.
It's far more likely that it meant the lover of vanquishing.
Mjölner...well, "mjöl" is flour/powder. Hammer things into dust.
Disappointed. Not even one mention of the most famous viking ever... Rose Nylund! RIP Betty White ❤️
Besides, no love for Hagar the Horrible?
@Mr. King I guess the joke went right over your head
watching this,i find lots of similiarities between ancient vikings and ancient turks...ancient mezo and nomads must have had a common shamanistic belief system which ranged from eastern asia to finland,where most probably all this runic,wolf,gods,myths stories stem from...cool...