Black and white Norse sleeve design with runes, a Vegvisir and valknut symbols, shown beside a mock-up of the design on an upper arm.

Norse rune sleeve design with Vegvisir

Upper arm · Black and grey · Flash

The image pairs a digitally rendered arm, with the design drawn over the upper arm, with a larger black and white design sheet. The sheet shows a central compass-like circle of runes, two valknut symbols, a band of runic script and a Vegvisir in a lower panel, all framed by bold tribal-style borders. The linework is solid black with no shading, and the design is shown without colour.

Upper arm Rune Compass Tribal pattern Sleeve

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

Dear Ingrid,

Keep reading

They held the lorry at Dover for six hours, and I spent most of them staring at the wall of the customs shed, where someone had pinned a map of the North Sea with the wind roses drawn in biro. Nobody on that shift knew what a Vegvisir was, so I told them. A sign that keeps a traveller on course in bad weather, if you believe the old books. I didn't mention that your grandfather drew one on the back of every shipping manifest he ever signed, because he said paper needed to know where it was going.

The officer who searched the cab wore a steel ring on his little finger and kept turning it while he read my papers. When he asked what the rows of angular letters on the sheet meant, I said they were the names of the days in an old tongue. That isn't true, but he laughed and let the seal stand. I thought of your grandfather's rune circle every time a gate lifted. He cut it into the kitchen table in 1971 with a bread knife, and your mother still won't eat there.

Now the ferry is loading and the sky over Calais has gone the colour of wet slate. His old chisels are on the passenger seat, wrapped in a tea towel, and I will bring them to you in Bruges on Sunday, the way he promised. Tell your son the chisels are older than the ferry, and that his great-grandfather never once got lost on the way home.

Love, Mum