Black and white photo of a flexed arm with a dotwork and blackwork interlace tattoo of beast heads and knotwork on the forearm and upper arm, with a sun-like motif on the shoulder.

Interlace and beast tattoo on a flexed arm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A flexed arm is shown against a brick wall, with the fist raised at the top of the frame. The forearm and upper arm are covered in dense interlaced knotwork, with stylised animal heads and looping bands framed by stippled dotwork shading. A sun-like wheel motif sits on the shoulder at the right, and the image is photographed in black and white, so the tattoo's tonal range is clear.

Dotwork Blackwork Forearm Upper arm Knotwork Interlace Beast Animal head Sun Wheel Arm

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The door-post had split along the grain in the second winter, and Sigrun would not let the carpenter replace it. She had Ketil carry the old oak down to the workshop by the fjord, where the light came in sideways through the smoke hole and lay across the bench like a blade. 'Cut the beast first,' she said, 'and the knot will learn to follow him.'

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Ketil had carved wolves and horses for twelve summers, but never a beast that had to be untangled from itself. He began at the jaw, a long head curled back over its own neck, and let the ribbon of its body run out from the mouth. Each time he thought he had reached the tail, the band slid under a leg and came up on the far side, weaving through the others until the panel looked like a river knotted by a careless child. Sigrun walked the length of it with a lamp, counting crossings under her breath. Eleven, then twelve. Nothing closed.

On the ninth evening he found the fault. He had been following the ribbon that wanted to be followed, the one with the bright edge and the easy curve. He took his knife and went the other way, under the eye of the beast, and the knot loosened the way frost lets go of a stone. Two bands he had taken for one turned out to be two, and they had been waiting for him to stop pretending otherwise.

When the panel was finished, Sigrun ran her thumb along the seam where the wolf's tail met its own throat. She searched for the join and could not find it. She decided that was the same as there being none, and hung the door-post on the hall wall beside the sun wheel that had hung there since before either of them was born.