AN ANCIENT set of teeth from the Viking era has revealed signs of a brutal “initiation ritual” that marked their social identities.
New evidence found after studying 1,000-year-old remains of a man shows that Vikings filled horizontal grooves in the teeth this apparently helped them identify themselves as traders.
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Archaeologists Matthias Toplak of the Haithabu Viking Museum and Lukas Kerk of the University of Münster in Germany found bizarre dental filings in the remains of 130 men from the Baltic island of Gotland.
Expertly filled horizontal grooves have been found inside the skulls of men from Sweden and Denmark, in a practice that experts believe may have persisted for years.
Research suggests that these dental fillings were found in locations known to support the trade – and that all of the individuals with filed teeth appear to be adult men.
They have been analyzing the modifications closely, looking for a possible explanation for the bizarre methods.
The research paper by Haithabu and Lukas Kerk says: “The Viking Age society of Gotland utilized tooth-filing customs as an internal signaling system in their communications.
“As a consciously and actively chosen embodiment of predominantly male adults, we argue that dental filings were primarily intended for endogenous interpersonal communication – members of a given social group could identify each other.
“We theorize that the custom of teeth filing may be linked to the commercial activities of larger groups of professional traders.
“According to this theory, they could have functioned as an initiation rite and identification sign for a closed group of merchants, as a kind of precursor to later guilds.”
Scientists previously thought that tattoos were the only form of body modification used in the Viking era, but now they suggest that Vikings also purposely deformed their skulls.
Instances of intentional skull remodeling and lengthening associated with the Viking Age have been found in three Gotland women.
The article adds: “This concretization also expressed a form of endogenous interpersonal communication, that is, as communication within a broader cultural group.”
“The modification of the skull was imposed on the three women during early childhood to express their affiliation to a certain social group.
“This concretization also expressed a form of endogenous interpersonal communication, that is, as communication within a broader cultural group.
“Although both forms of body modification have received great attention in other cultural contexts, the specific expressions of these customs in Viking Age society still lack systematic investigation in terms of their social implications.”
A brief history of the Vikings…
The Viking Age is a period in European history and dates from around 800 to 1050 AD
Some groups of Vikings survived a little longer after this period in different countries around the world
They originated in Scandinavia and traveled all over the world in their famous Viking ships.
The Vikings were known to raid and trade from their homelands across wide areas of northern, central and eastern Europe during the late 8th to late 11th centuries – now known as the Viking Age.
They carried out many attacks on Anglo-Saxon Britain – the first recorded attack was in 793.
And they continued to make regular raids around the coast of England, plundering and capturing people as slaves.
Gradually, the invaders began to settle and remain in the British lands they had taken – mainly in the east and north of England.
In 866, the Vikings captured modern York (Viking name: Jorvik) and made it their capital.
Viking raids didn’t stop – different bands of Vikings made regular raiding trips around the coast of Britain a few hundred years after that.
The Vikings created a trading network that extended across the world and evidence of similar house styles, jewelry, tools and many other everyday equipment can be found in many different countries.
The Viking Age in Britain ended when the Norwegian king Haraldr harðráði was killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066.
Vikings are usually portrayed as having horns on their helmets, but there is only one well-preserved helmet from the Viking Age and this one is hornless.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
