Ancient Celtic Tattooing

Did The Ancient Celts Tattoo?

There is no definitive answer to the question of whether or not early Celtic people tattooed themselves because they left no written record of their own. Instead, we are left to draw our own conclusions from the scant evidence that is left from the centuries following their invasion by the Roman empire.

In 50 BCE, Julius Caesar wrote in his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars that, during his campaigns in southern Britain in 55 and 54 BCE, he observed that “all Britons paint themselves with woad, which turns the skin a bluish-green color; hence their appearance is all the more horrific in battle.” In fact, the word Britannia may be derived from an ancient Celtic word that meant 'land of the painted people'. Some translations use the word 'paint' while others may use 'color' and it is tempting to interpret what Caesar describes as a tattoo, especially in light of subsequent accounts.

Some two hundred years later, the Greek historian Herodian (ca. 170 to 240 CE) wrote an eight book Roman History which has proven over time to be somewhat less than reliable. Referring to the Caledonians (likely the Picts), he noted that they 'draw figures of animals or symbols on their skin by pressing hot iron onto their limbs, causing great pain, and over this they rub the sap of a plant'. Undoubtedly such a process would have created permanent pigmentation -- a tattoo by any other name. However, Herodian never set foot in the British isles and he writes some two centuries after the first Roman invasion, by which time traditional Celtic practices of body decoration may have changed.

Another two hundred years elapses before mention of Celtic tattooing is made again -- this time in poetry. According to Claudius Claudianus (370 to 410 CE), the court poet to the Roman emperor Honorius:

"The legions guarding Britannia's farthest reaches,
Reigning-in the barbaric Scots,
Saw on the bodies of the dying Picts
Crude images cut with iron."

As with Herodian, the mention is made of an iron implement, implying something permanent, however Claudian makes no mention of pigment nor of the application process, only the results visible on corpses.

The image above is an imaginative 17th century illustration of a tattooed Pict.

Again, another two centuries elapses until the Spanish Bishop of Seville, later known as Saint Isidore (ca. 560 to 636 CE), made a note of tattooing in Britannia. Writing as a sort of encyclopedist of the Dark Ages, he noted that the Picts (from the Latin pictus for 'painted') would prick their designs and then rub sap into them. And, as in so many indigenous societies, it was the Pict elite who used their tattoos to distinguish themselves from the rest of their group.

Given the very early evidence for the (albeit simple) technology of tattooing found in Europe, and the existence of a process that is clearly tattooing described for the Picts some six hundred years later, plus the intervening partial glimpses into their body decoration after the time of Roman invasion, it seems likely that ancient Celtic peoples may indeed have practiced some form of tattooing.