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.
