A REAL TALE OF THE REAL TATOOIST BEHIND THE CHARACTER AND WOULD-BE TATOOIST ASGER IN THE NOVEL ”NORDKRAFT” (2002) by SWEDISH NOVELIST JAKOB EJERSBO.

In the summer of 1994 I decided to get had my first tattoo. During a visit to the Nationalmuseum in Copenhagen, I got fascinated by the patterns artfully crafted at an axe, that had been dug out near my hometown years ago.

Me, at the time acting out the part of an atheist whore found the motive stunningly suitable. A friend of mine hooked me up with a biker called Jimmy who at the time rode with a gang called Jolly Roger, and who had just begun tattooing. He needed lab rats for practice. He wasn’t good my friend said, but he was cheap.
So I arrived at the Jolly Roger clubhouse and met up with Jimmy, who turned out to be a perfectly nice and easygoing biker. He performed the routines smooth, and during the two hours it took him to finish the simple black outlined tattoo, he was surprisingly open. But what I remembered most about the visit, was when he told me that his first try out with the noble art of tattooing was practicing on a pork roast. The consistency of the meat piece was the closest you could get to human skin, besides humans.
At some point after someone told Swedish bestseller novelist Jakob Ejersbo about the incident, that later became the lay-out for the practice of the would-be tattooist Asger in “Nordkraft”.

Then on Monday I met up with Martin, who introduced me to Jimmy, and I asked Martin about him, how he was, his tattoo business and his biker life. The following is an attempt to reconstruct the telephone conversation Martin had with Jimmy, just days ago:

“Hey Jimmy, Its Martin here. How are you?”
“Good”
“I`m just calling you to bullshit, but there is however one thing I guess I never told you…”
“About my wife..?”
“No, Jimmy, Conni is all yours. But have you heard about this novel called “Nordkraft..”?
“I thought it was a movie..”
“Well yes, but first it was a book”.
“OK, and what about it?”
“Yea. Do you remember this guy Asger, the tattooist in the movie…?””Yea, its funny you say so, it kind of reminded me of when I started doing tattoo`s”.
“Hold on Jimmy, it is you…You remember doing a tattoo on this guy years ago? He told the writer of Nordkraft about your pork roast routine, which inspired him to write it into the book…”
“Nice. Why are you telling me this? Whats in it for me? Is there some money coming my way or what?”
“No..no, I just thought it was, you know, a funny anecdote…”
“Its allright…”
“So, Jimmy, what else is up?”
“No much”
“Still riding with Jolly Roger”
“No, I am kind of riding with these guys called Hawk Riders…”
“What do you mean…kind of?”
“Yea well, I know this other guy. He is a Hells Angel. His son is riding with Hawk Riders. He invited me to be a hanger, a hang-around…””Like a prospect?”
“No, a hanger…”
“What does that mean, really?”
“Well it basically means I wash the floors in the clubhouse every Monday..”
“Aren`t you a little old for that Jimmy?””That’s exactly what the wife said…Conni, you know…”
“Yea, but is that all you do there..”
“I get citated…”
“What?”
“Two weeks ago when I was washing the floors right, these young hip-hoppers walk in with a warrant and claiming to be cops. I thought they where taking the piss or from another gang, so I didn’t exactly at first fold to their wanting to search the place. But then they flashed their badges, and a senior officer convinced me it was the real deal…So they searched the garage, but found nothing. Then they insisted on searching my car, which was parked out front. Couldn’t very well stop it, so I let them do it, knowing it was spotless. So this young hip hop fuck cop finds my folding knife in the glove compartment and goes beserk. I tried to explaining them I only used it for work related stuff. You know I have this new job with the disabled in a nature-prohejct right?””No”
“Well, but I do. And these fucking hip hop fuck cop idiots gives me a citation: 3000 slackers. Right there…”
“Jeese…So you are basically 3000 slackers poorer because you are a hanger washing the floor at the Hawk Riders Garage…That’s pathetic Jimmy…”
“That’s exactly what the wife told me…but then again I havn`t told her of the moonshine money the tattooing is paying me, so basically I don’t give a fuck.”
“There`s a word for it isn’t there…?”
“Stupid…?”
“Yea”
“Can I be one?”
“You can get one stupid ass beating for calling me up before noon…”

Having read “Nordkraft” by swedish novelist Jakob Ejersbo more than one time, it goes without saying that this conversation could have been foreseeable in the life and crime of Asger, the pusher slash would-be tatooist in “Nordkraft”.
We will however never know. I for one do not await a “Nordkraft 2”, and in the meantime Asger, played by danish actor Thomas Corneliussen (http://www.danskefilm.dk/index2.html) has spun off to more acting, while Jimmy continues to be Jimmy and comforting it is to know that he actually made it as a tattooist.

the axe
http://home19.inet.tele.dk/strejf/billeder/mammen.jpg