Wild Boar Tattoo Meaning

Defense, ferocity, territory, and a fierce, relentless stand.

The Calydonian Boar was sent by Artemis.

Oeneus, king of Calydon, had made his harvest offerings to all the gods and forgotten Artemis. She sent a boar — monstrous, the size of a bull, with eyes that burned like fire — to destroy the countryside. It rooted up the orchards, killed the livestock, drove the farmers from their fields.

Oeneus called a hunt. Heroes came from across Greece: Meleager, Atalanta, Castor and Pollux, Theseus. It took the greatest hunters of the age together to bring the boar down, and even then it killed several of them first.

The Norse knew the boar differently. Freyr's boar Gullinbursti — Golden Bristles — was made by the dwarves from the same commission that produced Mjolnir. Its mane of golden bristles glowed so brightly it lit the path through the darkest night. Freyr rode it across the sky. It was the boar of abundance, of harvest, of the light that persists through winter.

In Celtic tradition, the boar was the warrior's animal — the supreme test of courage and the supreme feast. To kill a boar was to prove yourself. To eat the boar was to take its ferocity into your body. The champion's portion at a Celtic feast was the boar's thigh — the most contested cut, the one that had to be earned by combat or acclaim.

The boar is the animal that charges. It does not flee, does not circle, does not wait for advantage. When threatened, it moves forward. This is either stupidity or the purest form of courage, and in every tradition that honored the boar, the two were considered the same.

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