Medicinal and Therapeutic Ancient Tattooing in the Arctic
This is a bit of a long one but I hope it’s worth it! I’ve included a bunch of headings so that if you want to skip to the more interesting parts it’s easy to find. However the cultural context is important to really understanding why they tattoo so I encourage you to read it! Special thank you to Xam @resolutetattooclub on IG for suggesting me to the, Reinventing the Tattoo, podcast. I highly recommend it as well. The first episode is interviewing and archeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf. Deter-Wolf has a large body of work on tattooed mummies and led me down a rabbit hole where I discovered the paper on ancient tattooing in the Arctic and got inspired. My source article is taken from the International Journal of Paleopathology, so you can be sure this is accurate info. I didn’t really get into their methodology for determining each of these things because it’s a lot of scientific method that I don’t think suited our audiences interests, but if you’re curious or would like to fact check you can email me and I’ll send over some more resources. Enjoy!
Context and Background
Types of Tattoos
There are generally two main types of tattooing, functional and ornamental. In today’s modern world most tattooing we see is ornamental and individual but in the origins of tattooing are more functional tattooing. In ancient societies we see functional tattooing in medicinal tattoos and for spiritual protection, these were not individualized. They would use certain materials, placements, and designs that had special spiritual significance and were done to cure the person being tattooed. Cure in this context is about their belief as a spiritual cure for physical ailments and really needs to be considered within the culture it’s used. Another main difference between functional and ornamental tattooing are the types of images and symbols we see. Ornamental tattooing tends to be more complex and as mentioned earlier, were catered to the individual. Functional tattoos are generally more simple, usually being just straight lines or dots; they are also the same no matter who gets them. Although these rules are generally true we shouldn’t discredit complex functional tattoos or simplistic ornamental tattoos.
Culture
Throughout the article I will be referring to circumpolar Indigenous communities because it’s the most accurate way to refer to the whole section of the world were this happens. Circumpolar communities is talking about communities that are inhabiting areas around Earth’s poles. I will be focusing on these early peoples from the Arctic, certain areas of Greenland, Alaska, Siberia and the St. Lawrence Island which is located between Alaska and Russia. With all that out of the way let’s get into their tattoos! The tattoos found on mummies and in the archeological record of these peoples appear to be mainly functional: therapeutic or medicinal tattoos that were meant to treat or protect the wearer. Much of ancient tattoo culture is unknown because tattoos are only in a person’s soft tissue and this is the first thing to degrade during decay. Even with mummification we often can’t see the tattoos because the skin usually darkens during this process. However, the extreme cold along with permafrost-affected soils have helped with the accidental mummification of some peoples from circumpolar regions that has actually preserved much of their tattoos on the mummies that had them (which were few). These mummies are archaeologically dated around 739 CE through 1155 CE. Everything written about comes from a paper I found which itself has many sources and reflects years of research into these mummies, and the things they were found with to give us a sense of their culture.
Medicinal and Therapeutic Tattooing
Therapeutic tattooing was used to relieve a wide range of illness or distress; it helped people heal physically, psychologically, and spiritually. Often the tattooing helped physically in a way similar to acupuncture but the reasons behind the tattooing and the cultures perception of why the healing was working is usually tied to spiritual beliefs, various deities, and how circumpolar peoples often thought of souls. These distinctive health care practices and rituals have been shown to continue existing with some consistency across centuries. To understand medicinal tattoos we have to understand the context of the cultures they’re found in. Research theories to Indigenous disease and causation (which is the reason for medicinal tattooing) takes very seriously the direct influence of non human entities on the human condition and the interaction between humans and these entities. These tattoos ability to work, to help the wearer, by providing physical, psychological and metaphysical (the nature of the universe) changes within them.
St. Lawrence Island Yupiget and Siberian Yup’ik
Background
These tattooing methods and culture are only studied in archeology because mummies with these tattoo markings are estimated to be dated around 739 CE through1155 CE. It is very important to these peoples that deities and spirits were appeased to receive things like a good hunt and that malevolent spirits who were bringers of misfortune and disease were repelled. These malevolent spirits were thought to invade the human body, mostly through joints, to cause disorders to a person. Tattooing on the St. Lawrence Island is known to be female dominated, shamans or tattooers who performed the tattoo rituals or medicinal tattooing were usually female.
Methods and Materials
There were a few different methods to tattooing at this time that seem very unconventional now. Commonly they would do skin-stitching, where a sinew thread with their ink solution was pulled through the top layer of skin. Sinew thread is a thread made from sinew: a fibrous animal tissue that connects muscle to bone. They also did skin-pricking but it was less common. Traditionally the needles used for either of these were made of bone slivers but that evolved to steel needles in modernization.
Not only is the placement and symbol important to these tattoos but also the materials. Tattoo needles were very special because of the power these tattoos had, and so they were only allowed to be touched by the tattooer who kept them in a special bag made from seal intestine. The Sinew thread used in skin-stitching was commonly pigmented in lampblack, a black pigment made from soot. This was used not only for it’s strong black colour but also because it was believed to be effective against spirits. The lampblack was essential to protecting or curing the wearer. They would sometimes use graphite as the pigment because of its magical properties; it was known as the “stone spirit” because it had the magic to protect humans from evil spirits bringing sickness. Graphite was less commonly used despite it’s magical properties though because it was only able to be obtained through trades with Siberia. Either lampblack or graphite (which both start as powders) were combined with human urine to create the pigment solution they would tattoo with.
Tattooing with urine may sound gross at first but for 739 CE this was a great way to make tattoo pigment, it also had special spiritual reasons aside from urine being fairly sterile. Urine obviously comes from the bladder which they considered one of the primary organs where a persons life giving soul lives. The life giving soul gives a person the ability to breath, generate warmth, feelings, as well as thinking and speaking. Because of urine’s high ammonia content it’s thought that this method also helped with scabbing and a good heal. Urine was also considered to be an apotropaic which means it has the power to avert evil. Combined with the lampblack or graphite, they repelled evil spirits, and the dead from entering the wearers body.
Motivations for Tattooing
These medicinal tattoos were applied to the persons injury, or just locations that were believed to be highly vulnerable to spirits like the joints. Joints were considered to be super highways that malevolent spirits used to enter the body and cause disease or injury. The Yupiget peoples of the St. Lawrence Island as well as the peoples from Siberia believed that the human body had multiple souls. Each of these souls reside in a particular place in the body whether it’s a joint or limb. An ethnologist from the Arctic, Edward Weyer, wrote:
“All disease is nothing but the loss of a soul; in every part of the human body (particularly in every joint, for instance, in each finger joint) there resides a little soul, and if a man’s body is sick, it’s because the little soul had abandoned that part.”
Edward Weyer
On St. Lawrence Island soul loss is explained as gradual sickening causing injury or death. Joints were considered the home of the spirits with eyes, so they were tattooed to repel evil and keep all your important spirits in place.
The Yup’ik children from Siberia as well as the Alutiiq girls were tattooed as a right of passage at puberty. They would get dots done on their wrists and some joints. Elders explain that the young girl is tattooed via skin-stitching by the female tattooer on her wrists, the outside of the waist, inside of the knees, the temple, and sometimes on the chin or jaw. This was a preventative measure so that she would not have joint pain or headaches throughout her life. After the tattooing a braid of sinew was lightly tied around the neck and other joints as part of the ritual to prevent joint disease.
The Yupiget thought of death as a dangerous time when the malevolent spirit of the recently deceased could possess the living, whether it was a person or an animal during a hunt. They believe that animals have a spirit that is semi-human. If these spirits were not properly honoured in death they would bring illness or death to the disrespectful hunter. These spirits of the dead bringing illness are considered: the shade, which was said to be double the size of the animal. Since hunters had the most direct contact with the deceased they would often get “first-kill tattoos” called kakileq. Hunters who killed large animals were tattooed to repel evil entities. These tattoos were small dots again on joints since they were thought to be way the spirits could enter the body. Shoulders, knees, ankles, and hips of hunters were tattooed with these small dots. They would use that urine and lampblack mixture for these and that would prevent any spirit possession in the future.
Both male and female pallbearers were also therapeutically tattooed after the funeral ceremony. Incase you’re not familiar, pallbearers are the people in the procession that carry the coffin to the burial site. They were tattooed with nafluq, which describes these small dots, at their important joints that intended to prevent disease.
Across the Arctic tattoos were also done with similar medicinal intentions. Tattoos in this region were thought to treat arthritis, eye issues, inflammation or swelling, and childlessness. Although these are not all the same symbols across the board. In the Arctic these treatments differed between individuals or sometimes between families. This tattooing was often ritualized, at times a shaman was even the one tattooing. The ceremony was sometimes accompanied by prayer. One Siberian recounts from a visit in 1940 that he asked to be tattooed to prevent illness and disease for his whole family, brothers, parents etc. He goes on to say that the woman who tattooed him had something specific and intentional to say with each stitch to weave the protection into him while skin-stitching.
The St. Lawrence Island Yupik had many rules around medicinal tattooing. It was told by a shaman, a tattoo on the sternum is the shaman’s cure for heart troubles. If they have headaches, the cure should be to have a tattoo in front of their ears.
Young children on the St. Lawrence Island who were overly crying or showed sudden mood changes were thought to be an indication of future bad luck, even going as far as to say that the evil spirit affecting the child would bring death to their whole family. These children were tattooed with skin-stitching just above the bridge of the nose. This would confuse the evil spirit who wouldn’t recognize the child anymore and leave the family alone. Often this would go hand in hand with a name changing ritual done by a shaman to completely disguise the child from a malicious spirit.
East Greenland and Alaska
Motivations for tattooing
Two mummies from Greenland were found in the 20th century that had what appears to be dotted tattoos created by poking tools. Though medicinal tattooing did reach East Greenland it was not as common as on the St. Lawrence Island. Though most of the women have tattoos, usually a few short lines on their forehead or occasionally between the breasts. East Greenland and Canadian Eskimo women were known to have simple tattoos of light dotted marks near the nipple to help stimulate breast feeding or milk secretion.
In East Greenland tattooing between the eyes had the power to avert evil from possession. It altered a person’s appearance so that the vengeful spirit of a hunted animal would not be able to recognize the hunter and could not seek vengeance. This type of tattooing was especially important to Canadian Innuit if the tattoo wearer had previously killed a large game animal such as a whale or polar bear.
“These animals are considered spiritually equal to humans so the tattoo changes the man’s identity to prevent the spirit from recognizing.”
West Greenland Qilakitsoq peoples
Tattoos on Mummies
The Qilakitsoq people of West Greenland tattooed dotted T shaped tattoos on their foreheads that indicated kinship or tribal relationships. These were originally thought to be exclusive to West Greenland but similar markings have shown up on the St. Lawrence Islands, though they were likely for different reasons. Each culture had their own spirituality around tattooing and though the marks may appear the same, understanding the context which they were done in is key to seeing the real differences in these facial tattoos.
Figure Tattoos
Figure tattoos were also found across circumpolar communities, mainly in West Greenland and some on the St. Lawrence Island. Guardian figures, which were often loose sketches, were tattooed on foreheads or aching joints. The figures were meant to depict a powerful ancestor or other protector who shielded the wearer from nervous system disorders and other illnesses thought to be brought by evil spirits. We see forehead tattoos from Qilakitsoq mummies that have always been found in pairs, situated above the eyes. These images were sketches of guardian figures. Most of the tattoos I have gone over thus far are not individual and are often lines and dots that weren’t specific to the individual aside from which joints they got tattooed. Figure tattoos though are more personalized, showing the specific ancestor guardian to that person. They were considered to incorporate humans more into the realm of the spirits.
Conclusion
From all these examples of how tattooing was used we can see that circumpolar people, especially in St. Lawrence considered human bodies to be vulnerable to malevolent spirits. Elsewhere in the world we see that tattooing has been used therapeutically with practices aimed at pain reduction or similarly for spiritual protection. This curative tattooing tradition has been used to cure illnesses and spiritual disorders in many cultures and is meant to strengthen the otherwise weak human body. A tattooed mummy ( or current tattooed body) is a reflection of its culture. It shows us social norms, and gives us an insight into how these individuals went through their lives. Medicinal tattoos were very important for them to navigate their daily life. It also gives us a look into their values and their spirit world. These mummies are not the worlds oldest tattooed though, that is a story for another week.
Gloassary
- Circumpolar: Regions near Earth’s poles
- The Human Conditon: The key elements to human existence, growth, emotion, ect.
- Metaphysical: A branch of Philosophy that examines the nature of the universe
- Lampblack: A black power made from soot
- Apotropaic: Having the power to reflect away evil and bad luck
- Kakileq: First-kill tattoos
- Nafluq: Specific dots or patterns of tattoos
Source:
- Krutak, L., International Journal of Paleopathology (2018), http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpp.2018.05.003\
- Krutak, Lars. “Therapeutic Tattooing in the Arctic: Ethnographic, Archeological, and Ontological Frameworks of Analysis .” International Journal of Paleopathology, 21 May 2018.
