NUUK - Andu Schiodt Pikilak has dark dashes on her forehead descending into a deep “V” like geese flying in formation, an Inuit tattoo she sees as a rebirth for both her and Greenlandic culture. “We’re going back to our roots,” said the reserved 61-year-old psychologist who took the plunge seven years ago, before adding other tattoos to her forearm and fingers. “The tattoos disappeared for many generations and have only recently returned,” Pikilak told AFP in Nuuk, the capital of the Arctic island of Greenland.
The territory was a Danish colony from 1721 to 1953, before gradually becoming autonomous in the second half of the 20th century. Inuit tattoos in Greenland -- similar to those inked in other Inuit cultures, notably in Canada -- are primarily worn by women. They were never formally banished but disappeared when Greenland was colonised.
But for Pikilak, “it’s like they were always there”. Her friends and family applauded her choice and she has received few disapproving looks, she told AFP in her modern apartment adorned with a few traditional objects like Inuit carving knives. For Eva Nielsen, the decision to get a traditional facial tattoo, called a “tuniit” -- hers consists of 12 lines on her chin -- was the fruit of a long personal reflection, and a way of reappropriating her Inuit heritage. “It’s a symbol. I want to carry my culture within me,” the 33-year-old said. She grew up mainly in Denmark, with a Danish father and a Greenlandic mother.
