Vikings were fans of body modification and deliberately filed their teeth, says boffins.
They also deformed their own skulls, the experts said.
Scientists previously thought tattoos were the only form of body modification used in the Viking age.
But damning new evidence shows that they tried other forms to express their social identities.
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Researchers identified around 130 male-gendered individuals from Scandinavia with dental alterations, as reported on What’s The Jam.
They looked at skulls from the Baltic isle of Gotland.
The research team was led by Matthias Toplak and Lukas Kerk along with the Viking Museum Haithabu and the University of Münster, in Germany.
In the study, they examined the modifications closely and looked for a possible explanation for the bizarre methods.
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In some skulls, the team found a practice of filing horizontal grooves into teeth.
The research paper reads: “The society of Viking Age Gotland utilised the customs of tooth filings as an internal sign system in their communications.
The team suggest this could have been used by a close-knit group of men for “endogenous communication.”
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Scientists also suggest that Vikings purposely deformed their skulls.
The evidence was found on both male and female remains.
The paper adds: “This embodiment also expressed a form of endogenous interpersonal communication, that is as communication within a larger cultural group.
” On Gotland, however, this sign was probably unknown to the wider society, to the extent that it must have been interpreted as an ‘alien exogenous interpersonal communication’.
”As such, it would require a re-coding.”
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