Gotland is an island of 2,994 square kilometers, the largest in Sweden and the entire Baltic Sea, located east of the Scandinavian Peninsula and north of Poland. That was where the wonderful children’s series Pippi Långstrump (or Pippi Longstocking) was filmed in 1968.
Many centuries before, however, the island was home to a peculiar brotherhood of Viking merchants who developed a curious initiation ritual. An unusual practice that included permanent body modifications and had nothing to do with the usual tattoos of that time.
According to researchers Matthias S. Toplak, from the Haithabu Viking Museum, and Lukas Kerk, from the University of Münster, in an article published in the journal Current Swedish Archaeology, this Gotland guild voluntarily filed their teeth and also artificially deformed their skulls.
Specialists have documented dental alterations in the remains of at least 130 men from the Viking era – approximately between the end of the 8th and 11th centuries – found in various sites in Scandinavia, although the vast majority came from Gotland.
Toplak and Kerk explain that the practice involved filing horizontal grooves in the teeth, a custom that would have begun decades before the Viking Age and that appears to cease at the end of the 11th century. Examples of artificial elongation of skulls are more “rare”, since only three cases are known.
Both researchers propose that the dental modifications would have served as a “rite of passage” and a clandestine sign of identification for a closed group of men. “Its members could be identified through their filings, which could give rise to commercial advantages, protection or other privileges,” they point out.
Some of the remains analyzed came from the Kopparsvik cemetery, specifically from an area probably reserved for non-local people, such as visiting merchants.
Interestingly, all of the skeletons identified by the authors predate the end of the Viking Age, by which time trading communities appear to have become more established in Scandinavia, as evidenced by rune stones that explicitly mention “guild-brothers.”
Even more intriguing is the fact that some of the individuals with filed teeth are buried in ways that suggest they were ritually killed and therefore could have been slaves or convicts. This indicates that membership in an exclusive brotherhood of merchants was not permanent and that even those who had undergone initiation could still suffer a “dramatic change in their social identity,” even ending up in servitude.
Skull deformations, all observed in female remains, are “much more difficult” to explain, Toplak and Kerk assume. But based on the available evidence, they assume that the custom was not part of the Baltic island culture but rather came to this region from southeastern Europe.
“We don’t know what it originally indicated. Perhaps it was a sign of social status, beauty or particular social groups. On Gotland, these signs had to be decoded, as we assume that no one in the Viking Age knew what these head shapes meant.” , they add.
Researchers wonder if these people were foreigners who had come to live on the island with their male merchant relatives, or perhaps they were daughters of successful Viking traders who were born in remote places where skull alteration was practiced as a means of representing the elite. .
At least two of the three women were buried with more jewelry than is typically seen in most local burials. The third tomb, unfortunately, was destroyed in modern times, so it is not known how its owner was buried.
“Although these women were distinctively marked as foreigners, they were integrated into the local community,” the specialists assume. “We assume that their exotic appearance was understood as a reference to far-reaching trade networks, something that was very prestigious in a trade-focused society like that of Gotland in the Viking Age,” they conclude.
