Vikings may have practised body modification as an ‘initiation rite’

For a long time it was believed that tattoos were the only form of permanent modification in Scandinavia of that period, but in recent years researchers have found signs of two other practices of body modification characteristic of the Viking Age, which were the filing of teeth and artificial deformation of skulls.

It is noted that the homeland of most of the samples found by scientists, including skulls, is the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Although both of these forms of body modification have attracted attention from various cultural aspects, the social element of these practices has not been studied to date.