Viking tattoos of Instagram: Runes and contemporary identities

In this essay, we explore how and why rune tattoos – that is, tattoos created out of single runes or longer runic inscriptions – become implicated in modern reimaginings of Viking identity. What is critically interesting here is not whether Vikings actually wore rune tattoos. Rather, we are interested in analysing the cultural processes by which certain contemporary subjects come to adapt and inscribe Viking runes as living artwork on their own bodies and to display images of these personal markings on Instagram. That is, we are not arguing from the perspective of trying to find a simple equivalence between the medieval and the modern. Instead, we are trying to understand what kind of cultural work the medieval (in the form of Viking runes) performs in shaping 21st-century identities in a cultural moment when self-perception and social relations have become increasingly embedded in social media.