Frankfurt Tattoo Convention 2013

It's been 22 years since I was last in Frankfurt, backpacking around Europe a second time. Mattheus Reuss from Edition Reuss arranged for Lars Krutak, Brent McCown, Jeremy Lu, Dmitry Babakhin and myself to join him as a preview to next years convention where the focus will be on cultural tattooing with a lot more hand tattooists and lecturers to come :-).
We were joined there by my friend Kai Faust who is a veteran of the Frankfurt Convention as it is situated only 90 miles from his home town. He has worked there many times with his mentor Astrid Köepler from Drauf und Dran tattoos and now continues on his own.

The Usual Suspects

Started the convention with Yggdrasil the World Tree.

This is a simplified version I designed years ago... it has only 4 main branches but with 5 minor to make up a total of 9 to support the 9 worlds of Nordic mythology. However what I was most pleased with was the way I was able to symbolize the 3 roots by having them form a knotted treskele :-)

 Ginfaxi, a bound rune from the Icelandic Galdrabók, for courage and protection from ones enemies. I found great pleasure in tattooing this ancient swastika form in Germany.  A few years ago I displayed photos of some of my work in an art exhibition in Berlin only to have the authorities come and remove them due to this type of cultural content :-( The swastika is one of the most ancient of symbols in the world and is found on almost every continent and culture. It was also extensivly used by the Vikings. I tattooed this design on an American service woman who had just started her 3 year tour of duty 

Ottastafur, another bound rune from the Icelandic Galdrabók. The glyph is meant to help in overcoming ones enemies. This was tattooed on an member of the American airforce stationed in Germany and finishing his 3 year tour 

The Vejviser or Viking compass to keep Lars "The Tattoo Hunter" Krutak safe on his journey. The dotwork spiral in the background symbolizes the Malström or rough waters he has traversed safely over the years.

Noddy visited the convention hoping to get Kai to tattoo a magical rune script in his scalp. I met Noddy a year back when Kai and I were tattooing together at the København Medevial Market in Valby park. Unfortunately Kai was booked for the whole weekend so I was honored when Noddy trusted me to do the job instead of his life long friend :-) 

Noddy's hair was as long as mine and he was just as reluctant to let it go. The shave and a haircut was looking like it was going to take longer than the tattooing... thankfully Jeremy from Monkey Tattoo in Borneo lent me a better razor. 

The headhunters of Borneo are well known for their sharp blades :-)

The "bone on bone" application of the magical rune text

The finished design... now he just has to wait for the hair to grow out again