Sailors, criminals, prostitutes, bikers and thugs used to have a sign that was known to the entire civilised world. But times have changed. Now grandmothers, sportsmen, royals and artists have the sign. Only now it is not a sign but a symbol of belonging, a statement, a decoration or a bit of fun. The latest fashion accessory that will stick around longer than boot styles: tattoos.
During the twentieth century in Europe, tattoos were worn by edgy people. They were often refused entry into shops and denied some types of employment. A friend of mine is a police officer and he still has to have his inking covered up when he is working with the public, but I believe that this is changing now. His are scary devils and swords, chains and daggers, but many people have cute images of kittens, hearts and flowers or the names of their children or loved ones. Why do people have them though?
Evidence of tattoos or permanent marking of the skin goes back about eight thousand years. The first ones that we are aware of appear on the mummies of South American tribes and are thought to have involved some ritual or religious symbolism. Tattoos have been part of cultures from all over the world, from China, India, Japan and Indonesia to Europe and Egypt and some have been considered to have healing or magical powers. Others have marked the status of men or leaders or as certificates in achieving skills relevant to their society.
In the Dark Ages world of Anglo-Saxon England, it has been thought that the kings and warriors were heavily tattooed. Most of this, however, is merely conjecture as there is very little evidence of inking - as is the way with everything else in the Dark Ages. There is a famous story that after the Battle of Hastings the only way the King of England, Harold, was identified was via his tattooed chest, which bore the name of his wife, Edith.
Records mentioning skin markings or tattoos of the Anglo-Saxons were first appeared in some ecclesiastical documentation in Northumbria in the eighth century. Tattoos were to be banned because they were considered pagan, but obviously they still survived if King Harold still sported a few in 1066. After the Norman invasion the trend in England seemed to fizzle out for a couple of hundred years. They were next recorded in the eighteenth century when Captain Cook made his voyages and many of his men returned with tattoos. They had experience of the people of the South Sea islands who all had their skin marked in different ways and on different parts of the body. Therefore the tattoos were seen as exotic and exclusive. How times changed.
They fell out of favour in a big way when prisoners and slaves were given numbers or identification codes by their captors. In Russia criminals had a code that corresponded with their crimes and sentence, such as V for thief (vor), or K for hard labour. The most infamous tattooing was the tattooing of numbers on Jewish people by the Nazis in the concentration camps during the 1930s and 1940s.
Fortunately we have moved on from the negative connotations associated with tattoos. Except for those drunken idiots on holiday who have an obscenity permanently inked on their skin for a bet.
