The Art Of The North by Vitor Gonzalez is a collection of original tattoo designs inspired by the art of ancient Germans, Celts and Vikings. He discusses the history of the various Nordic tribes and the differences in the designs between areas and over time.

Rather than just copying the designs from the past, Vitor creates original art in the styles as well as remastered versions of historical pieces and in the author’s own words:

“The Art Of the North is intended as an interpretation of Celtic and Nordic art, adapting forms of medieval art in northern Europe to contemporary aesthetics of tattoos.

Is there a tribal art with European roots? Obviously yes, contemporary Europe has assumed as their own culture and values of the Greco-Roman world, this fact does not stop being a much more complex and diverse than it might seem simplification of our past at a glance.

The Renaissance and Neoclassicism would be two critical moments of the assumption of Greco-Roman aesthetics by the non-Mediterranean Europe, but little to pay attention to European official art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we realise that Europe assumes as own canons of architecture and sculpture set in classical Greece. It matters little whether we are in Lisbon or Stockholm, Budapest or Edinburgh official buildings are always built following the Greek orders.

Such assumption implies a waiver of the own aesthetics, assuming they are barbaric forms of expression. We adopt, in that sense, also the vision of ancient Greeks and Romans on the art of non-Mediterranean Europe.

As this implies that any simplification lose sight or do not know much of our past. Both Celts and the ancient Germans created a own artistic styles of great aesthetic value and great symbolism. In contrast to the realistic naturalism of the Greco-Roman world, we find here a fundamentally abstract and symbolic art that if would be easy to compare with other ethnic styles from around the world. Hence, the claim of Art Of The North, is completing a collection of designs for tattoos inspired by that European tribal art”.

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