What Everybody Should Know About The Celtic Tattoo Art?
Posted on June 1, 2008
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The Celtic tattoo art in spite of its today’s popularity represents the same mystery as the skiff one does because of its origin misidentification.
There is a great deal of Celtic tattoo graphic elements, things from life and fairy-tales. If comparing ancient Celtic cosmogony with its natural basic and its loads of animal motifs many questions and serious discords are rising. The thing is not in alien details, but in its predominance change. A so called “wicker†was famous all over Eurasia from the ancient times. Celtic tattoos always kept aloof due to its special “arboreal†preferences, which were developed in its unique ornaments (knots and wickerwork).
But, to consider the evolution of Celtic tattoos let’s return to the subject of the Celts. Who were they? When did they live and where?
The Celts are the ancient tribes that lived in the beginning of the first millennium BC in Rhine, Siena and Loire basins and later occupied the territories of modern France, North Italy, North and West Spain, the British Isles, Czech Republic and Hungary and Bulgaria in part. The Romans called them the Gauls. The Celts mingled with indigenous tribes. In the 2nd century BC the Romans forced out the Celts from the north of Italy. Soon Caesar captured Gaul. By the middle of the 1st century BC the Celts had been conquered by the Romans and were romanized.
The Gaul and Britain conquest of Caesar’s legions struck a crushing blow to the Celtic world. Hence it appears a question – where do the animals in plant wickerwork come from as the Romans propagated Greek realism in art? It may be connected with the fact that a conquered part of Britain was under the control of the hired Sarmats. The inhabitants of the steppe regions Sarmats and the martial Celts mixed. The second version is that there were many Germanic and Scandinavian tribes that lived at that territory. So Scandinavian Vikings took in local customs and in a period of time added their own to the Celtic tattoos.
Further the Celtic tattoo art got a new style name – Celt-roman. Slavic tribes together with Rus christening got their past modernized motifs called Byzantine style. In contrast to Indian motifs Celtic tattoos can’t be considered as similar and invariable.
The popularity of Celtic images in tattoos has experienced regeneration recently. As the ancient Celts were famed by its skillful metal masters, complicated jewelry and weapon traceries their modern descendant saved the ancient symbolism in clothes, jewelry and, certainly, tattoos.
The majority of Celtic design variants were taken from the antique Irish manuscript “The Book of Kells”, which is kept at the College of the Holy Trinity in Dublin. The designs copied from stones come also from that Celtic period.
Celtic nodes usually have neither the beginning nor the end. This symbolizes the endless death and birth cycle. Celtic animal images follow the same principle though its lines can stop in head, paw and tail areas. Some nodes can be finished with spirals and zoomorphic elements.
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