JAN "TAT" NIELSEN
The Tattooed Man

Jan Nielsen was a sailor who joined the colony after the Great Crossing. He married an Hwari girl named Hurulu in Constonia and joined the church. While he and his new wife settled in Nadiria as colonists, Jan often worked supply expeditions to and from Constonia in the Antarctic spring. During the winter months, he would hang around in various pubs and listen to stories. After several years, he asked his wife to tattoo on "buttons", as he called them. Jan's buttons were circular or oval frames with a vignette or symbol or scenario that represented a story of Nadiria's history.

By the time Jan "Tatt", as he was called, became on old man he was completely covered with buttons. When he died in 1891, at the age of 76, he was enshrined naked in the clear ice at the Museum. Almost immediately, a book was published bt colonist, Adam Christopher, recording all the buttons with their associated stories. Entitled, "Carnographia: The History of Nadiria as Inscribed onto a Living Man," the book had chapters entitled Torso, Right Arm, and Left Leg, and the compendium was divided into two volumes: the Left Book and the Right Book. It remains the most authoritative reference book on the subject.

Some believed that the buttons were not just history. They believed that since Hurulu was a shaman's daughter, she had mystical powers to divine the future. It is rumored that she ritually consumed a special plant from the Argentinean jungle and saw visions. She then covered Jan's body with the entire history of Nadiria, beyond Jan's death and through the colony's mysterious disappearance.

Many of the buttons have been deciphered and their meanings are known. There are numerous buttons, however, that have never been understood and thus no meaning ascribed to them. Much speculation and discussion surrounds these buttons ever since Jan's death. For a short while, several Nadirians devoted much time to studying Jan's buttons, but when no revelations came about regarding the Undiscovered Buttons, most lost interest.