Traditional Bosnian tattoos called kolo (circle). Dessin de TRUHELKA, 1894, p. 249 = TRUHELKA, 1896, p. 499. Via Bosna Tattoo.
Note that Kolo is also the name of a dance: Wiki says:
Kolo or Oro (Bosnian: Коло, Kolo, Croatian: Kolo, Serbian: Коло, Kolo Belarusian: Кола, Kola, Macedonian: Оро, Oro, Slovene: kolo) is a collective folk dance common in various South Slavic regions, named after the circle formed by the dancers.
Croat tattooing in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosna Tattoo says:
Croatian historian Ćiro Truhelka did research about tattooing of Catholics in Bosnia and Herzegovina what he described in this book – around 1984.
They tattooed or in Croatian ” sicati” or „bocati“ their children’s hands, fingers, chests, foreheads , male and female, between ages of 3- 20, with mother’s milk (of a mother who had a one year old male child-in Kupres area, the milk from a child with blue eyes in Kraljeva Sutjeska area), milk from the black sheep, horse milk, saliva, charcoal, grime (soot), egg, yolk, juniper berries and honey by using needles with other natural materials.
Catholic tattooing in Bosnia and Herzegovina was a sign of our faith and it was a closer connection to God and of the sufferings of Jesus, what some women told me who were tattooed on Good Friday. But for many people that I interviewed it was a sign of belonging to Croatian Catholic population.
Via Bosna Tattoo
