Triskele
A figure of three spirals, or three bent arms or legs, turning around one centre. The oldest in Ireland are carved at Newgrange, built about 3200 BC, long before anything called Celtic. It is common in the La Tène art of Iron Age Europe, and three running legs are the emblem of the Isle of Man.
Meaning
The name is Greek. Triskelion, from triskeles, “three-legged”, is recorded in English from 1880 and the form triskele from 1885, the Online Etymology Dictionary says, for a figure of three lines or branches radiating from a common centre. The word covers several things that look alike: the triple spirals cut into Irish passage tombs, the three-armed whirls of Iron Age metalwork and the three armoured legs of the Isle of Man. In Ireland it is the basis of the End-of-Life Symbol of the Irish Hospice Foundation, a three-stranded white spiral in a white circle on purple, which healthcare settings display where a person is dying or has died. The foundation says the three strands are the interconnected cycle of birth, life and death, and that the symbol, “inspired by ancient Irish history”, belongs to no one religion. The Isle of Man has used the three legs as its emblem since about the 13th century.
Origin and history
Ireland's triple spirals are far older than the Celts. Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, the passage tombs of Brú na Bóinne in a bend of the River Boyne, were built about 3200 BC, the Office of Public Works says, and they hold the largest collection of megalithic art in western Europe. At Newgrange a large triple spiral is cut into the entrance stone, and another appears in the passage. The OPW counts the tombs among the most important Neolithic sites in the world. J. Romilly Allen, writing in 1904, put the Newgrange carvings in the Bronze Age, and thought its spirals “may have been the forerunners of the beautifully designed volutes of the Iron Age”, with the slab at the entrance the nearest approach to perfection.
The Iron Age art that Allen called Late-Celtic is now usually called La Tène art, which Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales dates from the late 5th century BC onwards, well over two thousand years after Newgrange. Allen found triskele designs common in it, especially on round disc brooches (fibulae). He thought they “may have had a symbolical origin, as the triskele was a well-known sun symbol in the Bronze Age”. One of the finest is a crescent-shaped bronze plaque from Llyn Cerrig Bach, found during the building of the airfield at RAF Valley, dated 200 BCE to 50 CE. Its three-limbed design was hammered up from the back. Museum Wales calls it one of the most important examples of Celtic art from Britain, and says archaeologists think this art carried powerful religious messages for Iron Age people.
The form outlived the pagan period. Allen noted that “the triskele arrangement of three spirals round a central spiral survived in the decoration of the illuminated MSS. of the Christian period”, and that in the Book of Kells even human figures are sometimes grouped in threes “triskele fashion”, their limbs crossed and interlaced.
Was the triskele Celtic?
Only in part. The Irish spirals are Neolithic, and even the word Celtic for the Iron Age art is now questioned. Museum Wales writes that La Tène art is the more proper name, and that while the early styles were once thought to be the work of the Celts, a people sharing languages and pagan beliefs, experts now believe the styles passed between cultures and were not tied to one ethnic identity.
The three legs of Mann
Manx National Heritage explains that the three legs appear to have been adopted in the 13th century as the royal arms of the kings of Man, whose kingdom then also took in the Hebrides, and were kept when the island passed to the English Crown. One of the earliest surviving pictures of the emblem is on the Manx Sword of State, thought to date from about 1300, and the legs appear on Manx coins from the 17th century. Why the kings chose it is not known: perhaps, Manx National Heritage suggests, because it was striking and distinctive. Another suggestion is that it adapts the triskele on the coins of Analaf Cuaran, the 10th-century Norse king whose lands included Dublin and Man. Folk tales tie it to Manannan, the sea god, but there is no early evidence for that. All the early examples show the legs running clockwise, towards the sun, and the motto that has gone with them since about 1300 is Quocunque Jeceris Stabit, “whithersoever you throw it, it will stand”.
Triskele or triquetra?
The two are often confused. A triquetra is a knot: three loops interlaced around a centre, the form Christians use for the Trinity. A triskele has three arms or spirals radiating from a centre, and is not a knot. The words overlap in practice. Museum Wales describes the Llyn Cerrig Bach plaque as showing “a triquetra flanked by extended lobes” in one note and as a “three-limbed design, or triskele” in another.
See also
Sources
- triskelion (n.), Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary
- Brú na Bóinne Visitor Centre: Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, Heritage Ireland (Office of Public Works)
- Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times, J. Romilly Allen (1904), via the Internet Archive, Chapters 2, 5 and 7
- Iron Age copper alloy plaque, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, Collections Online
- Celtic Art - Origins and Myths, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales
- Three Legs of Mann, Manx National Heritage
- Guidelines for use of Irish Hospice Foundation’s End-of-Life Symbol, Revised September 2024, Irish Hospice Foundation, Background
- triquetra, Dictionary.com (Random House Unabridged Dictionary)
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Last reviewed October 1, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research