@Lewdog If I had a penny for every time I've tattooed that. Mostly on American tourists, not surprisingly.
How interesting you're a tattoo artist @obsidian_cicatrix. I'm thinking of getting a Pictish/celtic type half sleeve tattoo done. Have you much experience of that type of thing? Edit: I know you'll have experience of tattoos but. . . you know what I mean.
I always wondered why they pronounce the basketball team's name as "Seltics" until I realized that that's what they want to do: Sell Tick(et)s! The bow tie needs to go. I hate bow ties.
Same in Belfast. And yes @outsider, I've done loads of Pictish stuff... well stuff that has been attributed to the Picts but again, a lot of it is actually a product of later times and of the revival. I've always fancied getting one done by Eric Rhyme of Kunsten på Kroppen in Copenhagen. He and the dude that works with him do traditional hand tapped and stitched pieces, and although they tend to go more with Norse style, they can pretty much turn their hands to any non-electric tattooing style. ETA Oh, and I retired from tattooing 10 years ago for a number of reasons but I still have a strong interest in what's going on in that world. The Pictish designs which I did most commonly are the well known boar and bull.
@jannert; further to our conversation on this the other day, I thought you might be interested in perusing this http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/picts/index.html that I came across tonight. Quite fascinating.
During the revival, I spend hours thinking of ways to make a torc work with modern (late 1980's early 90's) attire. The Dying Gaul made it look so fetch. Also, @obsidian_cicatrix, getting a tattoo done by you is now on my bucket list.
Funny how the Celts didn't record our own history... maybe it was all destroyed at some point or buried for future use as in some gospels, especially as Celtiberian was one of the first written languages dating back to at least 1 century BC. Going back to Stonehenge, the Celts built Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange) some 2500 years previous and is the biggest megalithic site in Europe. Still no one has a clue why... Maybe there was aliens back then...
I think when the Roman empire became Christian that cultural acceptance was killed off. So you could say: had Constantine not embraced Christianity but instead destroyed it....
@Wreybies Talk about coincidence—your mentioning the Dying Gaul and tattoos in one post—I tattooed his likeness onto husband no.1.
I've just bookmarked that site. How fascinating, as you say. That a culture could exist in a complete-enough state to create that ring of stones and the adjacent site being excavated at Ness of Brodgar just now—not to mention have the means to sail back and forth between Orkney and the mainland, as well as Ireland and Scotland—and we know virtually nothing about them. It's interesting the reference made to the Picts and Hibernii ...meaning, presumably, the Irish. I wonder what the connection is. There must have been coming and going between these island ...are they just branches of the same race of people? (And what about Shetland? I'll read more of this site and see what I can find out.) This pre-dates the 'Celts' by such a long period. Such a shame that the only written records come from Romans, who were a) biased against the Picts, and b) only speculated about what they 'saw' of the Picts' life and culture. To my knowledge, there were no Romans who could write from an insider's perspective.
The most fascinating thing to me about the celts, is they that didn't exist in the way people think they did. I watched a documentary a few years ago on this very subject. I think it was called the mystery of the celts. Basically as the documentary progressed it became obvious that it was a diverse and culturally unrelated groups of people who have throughout various times been called celts. As has been pointed out there was romantic revivial not very long ago, where the celts became a wistful legend that centred around several ideas meshed into this thing called the Celts. I'd personally like to see a work of fiction that unravelled the myth of the celts rather than perpetuated it.
If it only dates back to the first century BC it's FFFAAARRRR from one of the first written languages. That would mean Celtiberian is younger than Latin. The earliest known script that I'm aware of is Akkadian, which is usually dated at earliest in the 29th century BC. Unless you mean it's one of the first written languages from at least the first century BC - frankly that's not very impressive at all.
Noooooo! What would we do without the gymanfa ganu? And endless repetitions of Cwm Rhondda at rugby matches? I mean, really.
What we're talking about here is if Christianity had never risen to the same status of power that it did. Christianity was the glue that held Europe together throughout the medieval period, the catholic church pretty much dictated the actions of entire nations. Most likely Europe would still be a very tribal place, probably similar to Africa where tribal hatred and violence still exist to this day. I don't imagine writingforums.org would exist.
