Viking Dental Health Was a Nightmare, New Skull Analysis Shows

Many Viking-era Scandinavians likely showed off their badass scars from raiding and pillaging, but they were probably kvetching more about an ear infection or gum disease. That’s according to new research, in which high-tech imaging revealed that many Vikings may have suffered from persistent, painful maladies in their heads.

In 2005, archaeologists excavated the remains of over 300 Vikings in the town of Varnhem. The remains dated back to between the 10th and 12th centuries, making the site one of Sweden’s earliest Christian settlements (while The Northman may have you believe Vikings were pagans, almost all had converted to Christianity by the mid-eleventh century).

To try to learn more about the conditions in which these people lived, archaeologists selected 15 skulls from individuals who died between the ages of 20 and 60. They then performed CT scans, using multiple X-rays to capture detailed images of the inner structures. A team of two radiologists and a dentist then examined the images.

“There was much to look at. We found many signs of disease in these individuals,” said Carolina Bertilsson, a dentist and assistant researcher at the University of Gothenburg, who led the study, in a statement. “Exactly why we don’t know. While we can’t study the damage in the soft tissue because it’s no longer there, we can see the traces left in the skeletal structures.”

What they found sounds perfectly hellish. As the scientists detailed in the journal BDJ Open, of the 15 skulls, 12 showed signs of periapical lesions—a type of bacterial infection at the root of a tooth. Ten had some form of periodontal disease, including bone defects, bone loss, or furcation involvement, an infection so severe that it causes a loss of mass in the jaw bone where the roots meet. Other issues found in multiple skulls included poorly healed or malformed jaw bones and one Viking skull showed signs of hardened tissue near the temporal bone, which may indicate an ear infection that spread.

Surprisingly, given that toothpaste wasn’t invented until hundreds of years later, only six of the Vikings studied were missing teeth before they died.

The study offers a small glimpse into what everyday life may have been like for Vikings 1,000 years ago, a time with no modern pain relief medications, antibiotics, or dental care. Infections “could stick around for a long time,” said Bertilsson.

Bertilsson said she hopes that other scientists use the CT scan technique, which doesn’t harm or degrade the human remains, in their own research.

“Very many of today’s archaeological methods are invasive, with the need to remove bone or other tissue for analysis,” she said. “This way, we can keep the remains completely intact yet still extract a great deal of information.”

Prior research showed that some Vikings did pay attention to their teeth, filing them to points and filling them with pigment. Cool? Yes, definitely. Something an oral hygienist would recommend? No, probably not.