Mjolnir, my way

This didn't start out as a tattoo design, but ended up that way. Some time back I was designing a Viking-themed game board for the playing of Tablero da Gucci, and I wanted to put a Thor's Hammer in each corner. But I didn't just want to copy an existing hammer design; I wanted it to be my own. This is the digital version made from a scan of my final pencil drawing. The knotwork in the interior is derived and adapted from some shown on various Viking Age picture stones from Scandinavia.

Somewhere along the way while I was sketching and revising, sketching and revising, sketc ... you get the idea ... I decided that it would become a tattoo over my right shoulder blade. And so it now is, though in the tattooed version, the colors are inverted (i.e. the white part in the drawing is tattooed in black on my skin). If I can ever get someone to take a decent photo of the tat, I'll share that.

As for the game board that started the process? In the end, I embossed this design into thin sheet metal, and those cut out metal hammers do indeed adorn the corners of the board. There's a photo of it here: [link]