Black ink compass design with rune-like marks on the outer forearm of a person standing with their back to the camera, wearing dark jeans.

Compass design on a forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A person is photographed from behind, standing in front of a pale wall with dark jeans and a bare lower back and torso visible. A black ink tattoo of a radial compass-like design, with spokes and rune-like marks, sits on the forearm of the raised arm. The linework is solid and even, with no shading or colour, and the tattoo is placed in the upper part of the frame beside the hand.

Geometric Forearm Compass Rune Symbol

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fog came off the Sound at half past three, the way it always did in November, and by four I could not see the cairn that marks the bend to Ardvool. Mrs Gillies had sent me up with the Thursday post and a tin of shortbread for her sister, and I had told her I knew the road blind. That was the first lie of the day. The second was that I could no longer feel my fingers.

Keep reading

What I had was my grandfather's compass, a brass disc no bigger than a biscuit, its face ringed with the marks he had copied from a book about the old Norse sea-roads. He swore they pointed true when the needle would not. I had laughed at him for it on a hundred walks. Now I held it flat in my palm, the way he used to, and watched the needle swing like a drunk man deciding which pub to try next.

I walked the spokes like a rhyme. North was the mark with the hook, so I kept it at my back and counted steps by the dry stone wall on my left until the wall gave out, then turned toward the burn, which I had always thought a poor guide and now found the only honest one. Somewhere below, a ewe was calling for a lamb that had already been found. A gull settled on the fence post beside me, eyed the tin under my arm, and seemed to think better of it.

When the lamp in Mrs Gillies's window finally swam up out of the grey, it was no bigger than a coin. I knocked the snow from my boots and set the post on her kitchen table. She asked how I had found the road. I told her I had asked the compass nicely. She laughed, then turned the brass over in her hands and touched the worn marks on its rim. Grandfather had taught her to read those as well, she said, back when the island still had more people than sheep. I had never once thought of him as anyone's student.