Sweden— Tattoo scenes & cities

In Sweden, sailors' tattoos are a memory of voyages. The maritime museum in Stockholm presents those of a sailor born in 1887 in Gävle, made between 1903 and 1914: an anchor and a star in London in 1907, a geisha in Kobe in 1913, swallows in Hamburg in 1914. The body becomes a travel diary.

Axel Wilhelm Johansson, a former sailor, opened a tattoo shop near Järntorget in Gothenburg in 1910; he is regarded as a pioneer of the profession in Sweden. A text from 1928 noted that Swedish peasants did not get tattooed, unlike sailors, construction workers and career soldiers.