Vikings Suffered From Several Dental Problems; They Resorted to Odd Treatments That Were of Little Help

Various diseases have lingered around mankind for centuries. Thanks to the advancement of medical science, suitable treatments have become accessible to people. On top of that, anesthesia has allowed doctors to carry out serious surgeries without inflicting pain on the patient. But that wasn't always the case and it turns out, that the Vikings used to suffer from a range of different facial diseases that were treated poorly, according to the British Dental Journal Open.

A team of experts from the University of Gothenburg, led by Carolina Bertilsson, used computed tomography to study a Viking-era skull that was excavated from the Varnhem burial ground in Sweden. Varnhem used to be one of the earliest Christian settlements in the country and the skull extracted from the site, showed signs of infections and diseases that were widespread in the community between the 10th and 12th centuries. The scans enabled the researchers to detect several signs of damage caused by facial ailments during that era.

Bertilsson, a dentist at Sweden's Public Dental Service, teamed up with dental radiology specialists and archaeologists from the Västergötlands Museum and found that all the excavated skeletal remains of 15 individuals had some sort of degenerative facial diseases. Some of them possibly suffered from chronic infections and others had serious dental problems. The Viking inhabitants in Varnhem had no choice but to suffer from diseases that also included ear infections and sinuses. These left lasting damage to their skulls. 

Some of their scans revealed pathological growth of bones in the cranium and jaw that indicated chronic infections. Since they had no effective treatments, the Vikings resorted to odd treatments. "There was much to look at. We found many signs of disease in these individuals. Exactly why, we don’t know,” Bertilsson explained in a statement. "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." The people of that time mostly suffered from maxillofacial infections and this progressed through their lifetime, affecting the shape of their jawbone. 

Minor infections led to long-term suffering and death. "Everyone knows what it’s like to have pain somewhere. You can get quite desperate for help," Bertilsson noted. "But back then, they didn’t have the medical and dental care we do or the kind of pain relief and antibiotics that we now have. If you develop an infection, it could stick around for a long time. Many of today's archaeological methods are invasive, with the need to remove bone or other tissue for analysis. This way, we can keep the remains completely intact yet still extract a great deal of information."

Adding to that, signs of periapical inflammatory disease were found in 12 out of 15 of those individuals. Other signs of pathological conditions were found, such as carious lesions in 27% of the skulls that were excavated. To deal with dental issues most of the time the Vikings used to forcefully extract the tooth, especially when one was suffering from periapical inflammatory disease which did not heal on its own.