Dark teal Celtic knot tattoo with a looped top on the back of a person's neck, with hair pulled up around it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Celtic knot on the back of the neck

Neck · Colour · Photo

A close view of the back of a person's neck shows a single Celtic knot tattoo made of interlocking loops that form a triangular shape with a small loop rising from the top. The linework is smooth and bold, with a slightly textured, speckled teal ink. The tattoo sits centrally on the skin against a soft, out-of-focus background, with hair pulled up at the top of the frame.

Neck Celtic knot Triquetra Knot Loop Neck

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tamsin,

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The thread came up from the dye vats this morning the colour of a kingfisher's back, and I have been sitting with it all day, trying to work out how a knot can be three loops and still have a fourth that climbs out of the top like a sprout. Your grandfather used to say the old knot-cutters at Hollin Edge tied the triquetra with no beginning, so that a child could never find where to start unpicking it. I thought he was teasing. Now I am not so sure.

The forest starts at the bottom of our lane, where the Wenlow oaks lean over the stile. Last week the children found a fence post there wrapped in the same knot, carved deep and stained with lichen, and nobody in the village will say who put it there. Mr Pell says it marks the path to the mill. The miller's daughter says it marks nothing, it is only a knot, and a knot is only a promise to hold something together. She has been stubborn about it since her brother went to sea.

I have decided to tie one for the post, so the next person who walks past it knows somebody remembers. My hands are slow now, so it will take me the week. I'll send it with the carrier on Thursday, along with the spare skein. Keep the loop at the top facing you when you finish it, and do not pull it tight until the last of the light has gone.

Love, Nan