Lady Gaga Tattoos

The Poker Face singer is probably best known for her outlandish outfits and crazy hair and fun dance songs. But Lady Gaga real name, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. But do not dare call her that, she only responds to Lady Gaga or Gaga. Well Lady Gaga is also no stranger to the tattoo gun. Lady Gaga has a total of three tattoos.

The one tattoo that most everyone has seen is the black peace symbol located on her left wrist. If you look at it, it looks upside down but from Lady Gaga's view it is right side up. She says she got this tattoo because of John Lennon. She is a huge John Lennon and Beatles fan and she grew up two miles from the imagine memorial. She she got the tattoo to help reminder her about the important things in life, like give peace a chance.

She also has a tattoo on her left should blade. This tattoo is of a Hawaiian flower. Her last tattoo is on her lower back and on her side. Gaga says that she got her first tattoo when she was 17 and got a fake id so she could do so. Of course her parents were not too happy. Well Gaga obviously regrets the tattoo design she got because she has gotten it covered up. She has three very large white roses on her side with some black vines and another set of the same roses on her lower back with some black vines that Kat Von D of LA Ink did for her.

Viking Tattoo Design - How to Make Your Norse Tattoo Unique

One of the most popular Viking tattoo designs is meant to represent an actual Viking warrior. If you are to get a Norse tattoo, you would probably want to have an image of something real, historically accurate. Then reject all the designs that represent Norsemen wearing helmets with horns. Such a presentation of a Scandinavian helm grew popular as late as in the 19th century. The only extant authentic helmet that dates back to the Viking Age was found in Gjermundby, Norway, and it has no horns. Norse warriors were very practical people and their weapons' designs were usually rather simple. They valued usability, not spectacular effects. It is true that there are a few Viking Age images representing ceremonial helmets with two protrusions ending with birds' or snakes' heads, but they look altogether different and were not used in battles.

The same applies to wings. Helmets with wings are not historic. Vikings did not use them. A rather popular tattoo design is valkyrie wings based on the Max Payne movie. In that movie people see valkyries as male demonic creatures with wings. The fact is that in Norse mythology valkyries are female deities with no wings. They were pictured as serving drinking horns to warriors coming to Valhalla, a place where brave people came after their death.

The other thing to avoid in authentic Viking tattoo designs is the massive double axe. The axes used by Norsemen were rather light and used single-handed. In the period of transition from the Viking Age to Middle Ages, Scandinavians also used the so-called Dane axe, which was indeed large, but it was not double. No double-headed axe has been found from early medieval Europe.

A Norse inscription is perhaps the best way to make your Viking tattoo design truly unique. However, getting a correct inscription is a real challenge. I would advise to proceed as follows:

• Decide whether you'd like to have an inscription in runes or letters
• If you want it in runes, decide which runic system to use (there are several different runic alphabets)
• If you still want it in runes, decide if it will be in Old Norse or just English words in runes

In my opinion, a cool Norse inscription does not have to be necessarily in runes. After all, the Icelandic sagas, our main source of information on Vikings, were not written down in runes. A quotation from a saga in the original Old Norse would certainly make a very cool Viking tattoo design.

If you want the inscription in runes and you've got the exact idea of what the inscription will be (you have the text in English or in Old Norse), then the next step is to decide which runes to use. The Elder Futhark was used by all Germanic tribes from the 2nd through the 8th centuries. The Younger Futhark started to develop at the end of the 8th century and was accepted in the whole of Scandinavia by the 10th century. It existed in two versions: Long Branch and Short Twig Younger Futhark. You may also want to use Anglo-Saxon runes. There existed even a secret variant of runes called staveless runes.