Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a mountain range in fine outline with solid black pine trees along the lower edge, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mountain range and pine forest on the upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a mountain range drawn in thin, layered black outlines, with hatched lines suggesting shading across the sky above the peaks. Silhouetted pine trees fill the lower part of the design in solid black ink, with a textured, slightly speckled finish. The design is set inside a diamond-shaped frame and is shown in black and grey only.

Blackwork Fine line Upper arm Mountain Pine tree Forest Landscape Linework Hatching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the fire is eating the good wood and we have only the one log left till the moon. You want the mountain story? Then listen. Before the road came over the pass, there was a shepherd called Idrun who kept goats on the high slopes above the river Sarn. Every autumn the peaks wore their layered grey cloaks, one range folded behind another until you could not tell where the sky began. Idrun said the ridges were the sleeping backs of giants, and that if you counted them at dusk you would always get one more than you counted at dawn.

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Her brother Tavi did not believe her. He went up in the month of the first frost to prove it, carrying a bronze knife, a sack of barley cakes and a clay lamp that would not stay lit in the wind. He came back three days later with no goats, no knife and no lamp, only a face the colour of old milk and a hand full of pine needles he would not let go of. When they asked him what he had seen, he only said the dark trees below the snowline had stood up and bowed to him, one after another, like a court to a king.

Idrun took the needles from his palm and pressed them into the ash of the hearth. She said nothing. Next morning she climbed alone and sat on the highest stone until the light came up pale over the ridges. She counted them slowly, the way her grandmother taught her. Eleven ridges at dawn, and at dusk, when she came down, there were twelve. She never told Tavi which was the new one.

And that is why the old women of Sarn say you must never count the mountains aloud. Put another log on. No, not that one, it is damp. There, that is better. Now hush, and let the wind do the counting.