Rune tattoos: what to know first
No old text forbids a rune tattoo, and none describes one: the ban is as modern as the fashion. What is real is newer and darker: through a twentieth-century occult system some runic shapes became symbols of the SS, and a few still mark hate movements today. Which ones, and since when, is on this page.
Where this comes from
no source no old text bans a rune tattoo, and none describes one
The ban has no old source: no text earlier than the twentieth century forbids wearing a rune, and none describes a runic tattoo. The caution is modern, and its dates are real. Through von List’s system runic signs entered the symbolism of the SS, and some are used by hate movements still. The doubled sig rune of the emblem, the «life rune» drawn on the shape of algiz, othala worn by SS divisions and revived by neo-Nazi groups since. Those are the dates a person deciding about skin should have.
The body in the sources
One concession the sources allow: Sigrdrífumál says ale runes are cut on the horn, on the back of the hand, and Nauð on the fingernail. A mark on the body is present in the text. It is carved for an occasion, not worn for life, and it is not a tattoo, but the surface is there.
What the poems say
The poems know nothing of any of this. They are older than the occult system by five centuries and more, and they say what each rune is: wealth, hail, the sun, the home. Whoever wants the letters without the twentieth century starts there.