Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Vikings filed their teeth

Who'duh thunk it?


...deliberate dental modification consisted of  horizontally filed furrows on the frontal upper part of the tooth crown. The furrows, usually multiple, are found on the front teeth in the maxilla...


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, it gets better. Tooth-filing was pretty common among North America's people at the time too and there are some journal articles speculating that this is evidence of contact predating Leif Ericsson. The Society of Ancients' yahoo grop (AncMed) had a lot of discussion of this a few weeks back.

MWG said...

Speaking of Viking medicine and grooming...I found this page a while ago, when looking for articles about battle-wounds:

http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/text/health_and_medicine.htm

"A number of Viking-age skeletal remains have been found in Denmark and Sweden with horizontal grooves carefully filed into the front surfaces of the most visible teeth. It's been suggested that these grooves were filled with a pigment or dye to color them. It's been further suggested that the Danish king Haraldr blátönn (Harald Bluetooth) received his name not from teeth darkened from decay, but rather from intentional modifications and colors applied to his teeth."

How cool!

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