Uffe
Uffe was born in November 1972. He is Danish, and grew up in different parts of the country.
Uffe has three kids ranging from teenager to adults.
He began his tattoo career in 2010 in Meatshop Tattoo. Later he worked at Kunsten på Kroppen before starting his own place – Ginnungagap Art, in 2018.
Before tattooing he did some other things. Originally he is educated as a graphic designer. After his exam he felt quite deeply that he did not want to work in the career–hyped world of marketing, which is typically where graphic designers go. So he sort of created his own coming of age, – Rite of Passage, and travelled to Scotland to look for adventure, and became the apprentice of one of the great teachers of his life. For a year or so he lived in the streets of Edinburgh and in the Highlands doing a lot of sword fighting, storytelling and performing. In many ways this was the period that made him a man.
When he came back to Denmark he was looking for a path and found it in Humanitarian work. From 2000 – 2005 he worked in humanitarian mine clearance in countries like Chechnya, Eritrea, Sudan and Angola. At the time he figured he had found the thing he was going to do with the rest of his life, but eventually it became clear that it was not very compatible with family life and he decided to return to Europe. If he had to say that he learned one thing from the years in humanitarian aid, it is that all humans everywhere are basically the same, the same love and the same concerns.
For a period, he had jobs to provide for the family, working as a business school teacher and later working with troubled kids – a bit of this and that.
However, craftsmanship and art was always his main passion and he worked with leather, painted murals and made wooden sculptures, but it wasn’t exactly it, and he was on the lookout for the right thing.
Inspiration often comes from many places at the same time and this was the case for Uffe. “I’m not actually sure when I got the idea of tattooing, but I do remember a good friend of mine saying one day,” You know what you should be doing? You should be making Viking tattoos!””
That crystallized a strong inspiration and he realized this was right, that was exactly what he was suppose to do, and he has been working with Nordic tattoos ever since.
Uffe would describe himself as religious. He also believes the western modern world suffers from collective insanity, and strongly believes a return to animistic thinking is humanity’s best hope.
He believes all actions every second are choices motivated by either love or fear, and that with great responsibility comes great power. He believes in the existence of a personal destiny for everyone, and that it is our privilege in this life to be brave and fight to find ours.
Uffe has continuously been working with the idea of the tattooing process as a Nordic Animistic Ritual aimed at supporting the client in healing, empowerment and finding their personal path.
Ave Maria
The first person you’ll meet when contacting us is Ave, she is our Studio Manager. She makes sure the studio functions, clients are booked, stocks are full and everyone is comfortable.
Ave is also s freelance Graphic designer and a skilled photographer. Ave, Rune and Uffe worked together on the 2020 Nordic Animism Calendar.
Ave has studied leather-work at Art School of Tartu, and Visual Communications at Chicago Art Institute and The Danish Design School. She loves to work with mixed medias, such as: Graphic illustrations, photography and patterns.
Among other projects; like a hand painted skateboard collection with Nordic folklore patterns – Ave is still deeply involved in The Nordic Animism Project.
Kybele
Kybele was born in Germany, but grew up in Sweden. She is Fluent in German, Swedish and English, and also, speaks a pretty good Danish by now. There is even some French proficiency which comes in handy every now and again.
Kybele and Uffe met at a Viking market in Sweden in 2017, and about a year later that they started working together in the new studio Ginnungagap Art.
Before joining the Studio, Kybele got her MA in classical archaeology and has spent about six months on digs in Italy. And, with additional studies in German literature and Art history, she has a lot to offer the general knowledge base in the studio.
She has also worked managing and booking rockbands, and been behind the scenes at tattoo conventions.
Friends of the Studio
The Studio Priest Oba Ile
Oba Ile and Uffe have been working together since 2013. Oba Ile has mainly been doing cleansings, blessings and initiation, and furthermore giving advice and guidance.
Through years of hard work Oba Ile has, in practice, merged the legacy of the Nordic Iron Age religions with religious techniques for ecstasy, healing, and ultimately life-changing processes such as initiation, enabling a reconnection with the under/overlying forces of the world.
Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen
Rune and Uffe have been friends since childhood, and although their paths are different they basically share the same worldview.
Rune is an historian of religion, Ph.d., educated from the Universities of Uppsala and Copenhagen. Rune has lived in many countries and done fieldwork in a number of contemporary (primarily Afro-descendant) religions, but since childhood he has had Nordic religion as a strong field of interest.
Today Rune is working on applying contemporary developments in anthropology to rethink the way we address Nordic religion both in terms of scholarship, but also as a reservoir of cultural knowledge for environmental activism and sustainability sensitization.
You can see more of his work here:
