#illyrian tattoos

[dawneternal]

☁︎ couldn't stop thinking about a nonbinary or trans masc Illyrian warrior with tattoos over top surgery scars (the tattoos are inspired by the mountains and the Sidra)

☁︎ pose reference by @mellon-soup

☁︎ please do not repost or use for AI

[balkanaffairsofficial]

Thracian Tattoos in Bosnia? Since much of Bosnia was mostly inhabited by Illyrian tribes, it is indisputable that the Illyrians were the same as the Thracians in culture, beliefs and secret indegenous customs such as tattooing. As we can clearly see this old paleo-balkanic custom of women tattooing themselves survived all the way into the modern age in particularly the more secluded areas in the Balkans such as in rural Bosnia. Much of the Balkans had the need after Ottoman independence to modernise into the model of a modern nation state; these new ideas such as the growing pan-slavic nationalism supressed balkan ethnic Illyrian and Thracian identity which suffered at the mercy of modernist republican intellectual classes of the 19th and 20th century and newly formed esoteric circles particularly from Russia. The tattoos preserved by Bosnian, and Croatian women during the Ottoman period shows a clear cultural connection to antiquity and had the Illyrians and Thracians just disappeared as is claimed by some Cultural Strategists surely such obscure folk traditions wouldn't have been taken on by newcomers?