Sicanje, an ancient Balkan tattoo tradition, attracts a new generation

The piece of paper, old and worn, was out of place. It came out of a book in the library of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, attracting the attention of an art history student. The student, who goes by the name OKO, took a closer look at the misplaced page. Cyrillic text accompanied drawings of hands decorated with curved lines and simple patterns. Radiant suns, crosses ending in forked branches, and crescent moons hanging with branches wrapped around wrists, hands, and fingers. OKO had never seen anything like it, but she would soon discover that it was part of her heritage. “I didn’t know we had this tradition,” she said years later. “And no one knew where it came from.”

For millennia, women in what is now Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina played sicanje– the word literally means “to prick” – on their daughters. Using needles and a mixture of soot, spit, honey and breast milk, the tattoo tradition covered the hands, chest and sometimes forehead in deeply symbolic designs. In the 1920s, anthropologist Edith Durham wrote that sicanje had passed from one generation of women to the next for nearly 4,000 years. But by the middle of the 20th century, this practice disappeared. Today, a new generation of women – and men – from the Balkans are reviving the tradition as part of a broader trend to reclaim and celebrate their heritage.

It is not known exactly when or why Bronze Age tribes in the region began tattooing themselves, but it may be related to religion or social status. “Unfortunately, we have no primary sources (on the origins of the tradition). Only the Greeks talk about them as their adversaries,” says Marija Maracic, co-author of The Sicanje project, an oral and visual history of the tradition. Born in Bosnia, Maracic emigrated to the United States as a child and studied art history at Cleveland State University in Ohio, where the project was archived.

In written stories, on vases and other works of art, ancient Greeks depicted Balkan peoples with tattoos, and archaeologists working in the region have discovered bronze tattoo needles in tombs 3,000 years old. Some of the ancient designs seem universal, such as the kolo circle, representing family and unity; it shares the name of a traditional dance still performed at weddings and family reunions. Other tattoos, such as a particular combination of designs, appear to signify a specific village or tribe.

In fact, sicanje symbolized identity but also protection, blessing and beauty for centuries. As the Balkans became Christianized in the 9th century, the pagan sicanje tradition evolved to incorporate Catholicism. For example, the Kriz, a pagan symbol of the four cardinal points, became a stylized Christian cross. And while women traditionally marked their teenage daughters at the spring equinox as a rite of passage, they began doing so on the feast of St. Joseph, which falls as spring approaches.

In the 15th century, sicanje transformed again, this time into an act of resistance. Under Ottoman rule, Christian families in the Balkans were taken Devshirme, sometimes called blood tax. Boys as young as eight years old were taken to Istanbul as part of a system designed to surround the emperor with loyal foreign servants, thereby limiting the power of the Turkish elite. The Devshirme were often well educated and served as soldiers and high-ranking bureaucrats, but they were still far from home.

During this period, Catholic mothers in the Balkans began tattooing both boys and girls, prominently marking them with symbols of protection and belonging. And if the devshirme ever returned to their village as adults, their sicanje would identify them, no matter how many years had passed.

As the Ottoman Empire declined, the sicanje remained a mark of beauty and religious and tribal affiliation. Tattoos remained most common among women, but some men also bore these marks. However, in the mid-20th century, under the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the sicanje tradition began to fade. Maracic says modernization, urbanization and other trends have changed attitudes toward ancient customs. Women began to hide their marks and their daughters refused to receive them. In the 1960s, sicanje only survived as disappearing marks on grandmothers’ hands.

In the 21st century, a new generation of historians and artists is rediscovering the tradition. Maracic sees the growing acceptance and interest in tattoos globally as a major factor in the revival of sicanje. Popularizing this almost lost art is also a way for people to celebrate their heritage and identity in a post-Yugoslavia world.

For OKO, now a leading foreign artist, this chance discovery in a university library led her to permanently ink the marks on her own skin. The artist’s tattooed fingers and hands became her trademark, and she incorporated sicanje into her street art around Zagreb. “I made massive collages…all over town, exact copies of my tattoos, just blown up,” she says. “So (I claimed the) entire city as mine. It’s my place because we have the same brands.

Bosnian tattoo artist Luka Tomic also uses sicanje in immersive art exhibitions inspired by both his grandmother’s Catholic sicanje and sicanje’s ancient roots. “I want to honor heritage,” says Tomic. During the shows, guests enjoy rakija, a traditional brandy, and Bosnian coffee in a space inspired by her grandmother’s living room. Next door, which Tomic calls “the ritual room,” he continually inks participants with original drawings that incorporate traditional motifs, creating living art.

Maracic’s research was also initially inspired by his family. “I grew up with all these older women with marks on their hands, and they just tell you, ‘Well, that was something that was always done,'” she says. However, when she began researching the subject, she found very few written sources. So she returned to the country of her childhood to interview the last living women with traditional sicanje, work that took her and co-author Josipa Karaca to some of the most remote areas of Bosnia. Maracic hopes his work will not only preserve the sicanje, but also inspire a wider audience to learn about its unique history.

“People like me grew up with it, with a lot of (tattooed) great-grandmothers, but it’s unusual for most people to see it,” Maracic says. “It was a real treasure to get to know each of the women we interviewed. I hope I have given other people the opportunity to get to know these women and discover our traditions.