Woad and the Picts: Tattoo or Taboo?

In medieval Germany, master dyers of madder (the main source of red dye at the time) were so threatened by woad’s popularity that they hired artists to depict cerulean devils and hellscapes in an attempt to tarnish blue’s reputation. Given woad’s stalwart presence in European commerce through the late 18th century (waning only because it was supplanted by indigo), their efforts at sabotage didn’t exactly pan out.

Tarnished or not, blue has always been a color of reverence and ceremony, which is perhaps one reason why tales of ancient Britons donning nothing but their blue birthday suits in battle so captured the imagination of Europeans in the Classical Era. Our fascination with the image has persisted for a remarkably long time. First-person accounts from ancient explorers, naturalists, and conquerors like Pytheas of Massalia, Pliny, and Caesar gave way to imaginative artist renderings throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods, which in turn have inspired modern creatives from historical reenactment events to Blockbuster movies like Braveheart and King Arthur.

1) De gentivm aliquot migrationibus, by Wolfgang Lazius, 1557, National Library of Poland, Wikimedia Commons . 2) John Cassell's Illustrated History of England: From the earliest period to the reign of Edward the Fourth, 1857, Wikimedia Commons. 3) Amaldon, from the Picts Vs Romans 5k & World Heritage Day event, 18 April 2017, Wikimedia Commons

Considering the long-standing narrative associating the ancient Britons and specifically the Picts with having woad-decorated skin, you might be surprised to learn that modern scholars and history enthusiasts disagree on whether it’s fact or fiction. A raucous debate persists over two points of contention: 1) whether the ancient Celts practiced skin decoration at all, and 2) if they did, whether woad was the source of blue used to color skin and tattoos. (5, 11, 12, 13)

The strongest argument supporting those who don’t believe tattoos or body paint were used by ancient Britons is the fact that no bog body recovered in the region has shown evidence of skin decoration (3). While there are other potential explanations for this (e.g. only a small handful of Pict-era bog bodies has ever been recovered in the region so the sample size is small; perhaps skin decoration was only surface level and deteriorated after hundreds of years in bog conditions; maybe skin decoration rituals were limited to a particular class (e.g. warriors), and none of the bog bodies recovered were part of that class, etc.), it does indeed present a gaping hole in the historical record. The lack of direct evidence has led some scholars to wonder if claims of skin decoration by Roman writers were merely attempts to make the Britons seem more barbaric in order to garner support among the Roman populace for military conquest in these regions.

Iron Age Cosmetic Mortar: An incomplete copper alloy cosmetic mortar or 'woad grinder' dating to the Late Iron Age or Early Roman period, c. 1-200 AD. National Museums Liverpool , Vanessa Oakden, 2017-05-19. Image in the public domain Wikimedia Commons

Although we don’t have direct evidence of tattoos (yet), we do have archaeological evidence of paraphernalia that the ancient Britons could have used to create tattoos (among other things), including needles, cauldrons, tweezers, razors, and cosmetic grinders (pictured above) (3, 7). Further, the Picts in particular left behind a mysterious language of symbols carved into large stone slabs. These symbols include a variety of animal figures similar to those that Greek writer Herodian described having observed on the skin of Pictish people in the third century AD (1).

Carved Pictish stone slabs featuring animal and geometric figures, left to right: 1,2,3,4,5

Many of the more enthusiastic naysayers take issue with woad itself, claiming various reasons that it couldn’t have been the source of paint and pigment the ancient Britons used in their skin decoration rituals. Much of their supposition seems to be based on two or three personal experiments that went afoul, all of which appear to have had only a tenuous grasp on the challenging chemistry of woad and indigo (11, 12, 14, 15).

Common complaints among those who have conducted personal experiments are that: 1) woad is caustic to the skin and causes scarring, 2) rubbing woad into pricked skin produces only short-lived tattoos, and 3) as a body paint, woad quickly flakes off. None of these experimenters has published their methods so it’s difficult to understand where exactly things went wrong; however, each of these claims is fairly easy to dispute based on historical precedence alone:

*Isatis tinctoria, L*. Amédée Masclef, Atlas des plantes de France. 1891 Wikimedia Commons

Woad is caustic to the skin and causes scarring:
Woad’s latin name, Isatis tinctoria, contains two hints at its historical use: “tinctoria” refers to its use as a dye. “Isatis” is derived from the Latin word “Isazein,” meaning to make equal or equilibrate, in reference to woad’s long use in wound healing and other medicinal applications throughout Europe and China. Hippocrates, Gaelen, and Pliny the Elder all wrote about woad’s use in treating wounds, ulcers, and hemorrhoids. In the Middle Ages, when woad production was high throughout many parts of Europe, it was widely used to treat snake bites, wounds, and other inflammatory ailments, especially of the skin. Today, it is still commonly used in various applications in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and modern in vitro and in vivo studies have given credence to its historical uses: woad has anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, antimicrobial, antiviral, analgesic, and antioxidant properties (6).

Japanese Irezumi, L to R: 1) "S. Ogawa, Photographer, Yokohama", 1890s, Wikimedia Commons . 2) Japanese man tattooed with a snake figure, Unknown author, c 1880-1890, Wikimedia commons. 3) Portrait of a man with Japanese Irezumi tattoo, Baron Raimund von Stillfried, 1868-1880, Wikimedia Commons

2. Rubbing woad onto pricked skin produces only short-lived tattoos:

As we know from Part II of this series, the woad plant contains no actual dye or pigment molecules, only the precursors to them. If the ancient Britons knew how to dye cloth with woad-derived indigo—and there’s evidence that they did—then they knew how to make both the dye and pigment forms of indigo. The question of whether indigo in some form can be used successfully as a tattoo colorant can be answered by visiting another region with a long history of tattooing: Japan. In Japan, the tradition of large, complex, and symbolically-laden tattoos is known as Irezumi. This style of tattoos gained popularity in the 18th century and was based on the aesthetic of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, featuring richly-colored motifs of flora and fauna, mythical creatures, legendary heroes, and religious symbols (8). Traditionally, skilled artists known as ‘horishi’ painstakingly hand-poked designs into large areas of the skin using needles, adding natural pigments derived from plants and minerals to give the irezumi their characteristic vibrancy (9). Among the plant-derived pigments commonly used in the 18th and 19th centuries was indigo, used to give beautiful, clear blues. According to David Lee in his book, Nature’s Palette, The Science of Plant Color,” the horishi obtained indigo pigment by “boiling old rags originally dyed with this plant material” (10).

Photo of indigo-dyed hands from Wikimedia Commons; by Anjora Noronha March 5, 2011

3. As a body paint, woad quickly flakes off:

One of the naysaying experimenters, Lambert, goes as far as suggesting that there is nothing you can do to make woad stain the skin. As any dyer knows, indigo in a properly made dye vat will stain pretty much anything it comes into contact with – wood, plastic, rubber, cotton, wool, and yes—without a doubt—skin. Perhaps the woad cynics are working on the assumption that indigo dye technology hadn’t yet reached Britain. While we don’t have direct evidence like the dyed textile samples that have been found elsewhere in the ancient world, Britain’s damp, blustery climate is as likely a culprit for that dearth as any other. Indigo dyeing had already been spreading elsewhere in northern Europe for more than 2,000 years, and archaeological evidence places woad—an inedible, non-native plant—in Briton by the Iron Age (4). It’s a bit hard to imagine that news of this plant’s remarkable alchemy hadn’t yet found its way into the region.

Lastly, indigo doesn’t need to be in dye form in order to stain skin: Simone Parrish, a member of a modern Celtic living history group, reports that she’s been using woad indigo in pigment form as a body paint for at least 20 years. Her recipe, according to Lauren MacDonald’s In Pursuit of Color, is: “5g powdered woad, 2 tsp whisky, and a pinch of rosemary (to combat what she describes as the mixture’s ‘wet dog’ smell).” (2)

“Picten en hunne Landing” Cornelius Tacitus; Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), Peace Palace Library, Wikimedia Commons

In all likelihood, whether the Picts and other ancient Britons actually practiced any form of skin decoration—and if so what substance(s) they used—will forever remain a mystery. Without a written language that we can decipher or direct evidence of tattooed bog bodies, a definitive answer will continue to elude us no matter how much we debate the matter. That said, as an artist and a dyer, I’ll gladly add my supposition the woad pile: if donning ceremonial blue paint and peppering animal tattoos across their skin was indeed an important aspect of the ancient culture in Britain, I believe it’s very plausible that they relied on woad’s indelible magic to bring their sacred ceremonies to fruition.

Sources:

Sidder, Aaron, “Earliest Evidence of Indigo Dye Found at Ancient Peruvian Burial Site”, The Smithsonian, September 15, 2016.
Ireland-Jones, Naomi, “The influence of archaeological discoveries since the C18th on understanding the ancient pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain,” The Post Hold, 2016
Van der Veen, M. (1996). 'The plant macro-fossils'. In May, J., Dragonby: report on excavations at an Iron Age and Romano-British settlement in North Lincolnshire Vol. 1 (Oxford, Oxbow Monograph 61), 197–211
Tastes of History, “Dispelling Some Myths: Woad”
Speranza J, Miceli N, Taviano MF, Ragusa S, Kwiecień I, Szopa A, Ekiert H. Isatis tinctoria L. (Woad): A Review of its Botany, Ethnobotanical Uses, Phytochemistry, Biological Activities, and Biotechnological Studies. Plants (Basel). 2020 Mar 1;9(3):298. doi: 10.3390/plants9030298. PMID: 32121532; PMCID: PMC7154893.
Carr, G (2005). Woad, Tattooing and Identity in Later Iron Age and Early Roman Britain. Oxford Journal of Archaeology. [Online] 24 (3), 273-292.
Richman-Abdou, Kelly (2021) “Irezumi, Tebori, and the History of the Traditional Japanese Tattoo” My Modern Met
“Tattooing in Japan: A Cultural Tapestry” Sept 6, 2023
Fish, Pat, tattoo artist’s blog: “Pictish Tattoo Art”
Reeves Eyre, Jodi, PhD, RPA (2017), “Al the Britons doe dye themselues wyth woade: experimenting with woad and its history”, The Recipes Project.
O’Quinn, Erin. (2012) “Who were the Picts? And what about those tattoos?” Celtic Fire
Lambert, Saigh Kym (2004) “The Problem of the Woad”
Irish Pagan School (2023), “Everything you Need to Know About Celtic Woad”

The Natural Dye Chronicles: Woad, Part III

The Natural Dye Chronicles: Woad, Part II