Seafarer missionary Leif Rasmussen took a closer look when he saw the chef's tattoo (see photo) during a visit to a ship: "It was a 3D tattoo, and it was as if the hand of Jesus and the sailor's hand melted together. The most beautiful tattoo I've ever seen," Leif enthuses.
Tattoos signal identity. And for the chef, it's Christianity in colours he doesn't want to run away from - and which is difficult to erase from mind and body.
The Western world got the word tattoo from James Cook, who in his account of an expedition to Tahiti in 1768-71 described the way the locals used this form of body adornment, which they called tattov.
For much of the last two centuries, tattoos have been associated with the people of the sea, but from sailors travelling around discovering foreign peoples and cultures and bringing tattoos to Scandinavia, tattoos have become an integral part of many people's way of expressing themselves. It's no longer just seafarers who get tattoos.
