Vikings suffered from acute toothache and were forced to pull out their own teeth to deal with the pain, analysis finds

It is centuries since the Vikings rampaged across Europe amid an orgy of havoc and terror.

While their worst excesses are difficult to excuse even after all these years, it seems they may have been suffering from particularly acute toothache at the time.

Perhaps due to their diet of beer, mead, honey and carbohydrates, it appears that they suffered large cavities - which led to painful infections and abscesses.

Without access to fillings or root canals, there is also evidence they tried to 'drill' their own teeth, using tools to create holes. Many were even forced to pull teeth out to cope with the pain.

The findings come from analysis of more than 3,200 teeth from 171 Swedish Vikings buried in a cemetery between the 10th and 12th century.

Researchers found almost two-thirds of Viking adults had at least one cavity in their teeth.

In four per cent of teeth, this had caused an infection reaching the nerve, and potentially an abscess, causing the kind of agony which would be dealt with using a root canal today.

But the resourceful marauding Vikings appear to have realised, even without dentists' drills, that they could create a hole in the tooth to relieve the pressure and release pus from the infection.

These holes were found in the teeth of two people within the cemetery close to a Christian church in Varnhem, Sweden.

Dr Carolina Bertilsson, who led the study from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said: 'Many Vikings may well have been in a very bad mood because of excruciating toothache.

'When something hurts that badly, you want it to stop, which may be how they came across early forms of dentistry and, it appears, sometimes pulled their own teeth out in desperation.

'Without a local anaesthetic, that must have been truly horrible, so we should maybe feel a bit sorry for them.'

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, involved dentists closely examining the teeth of 87 men and 46 women from a Swedish Viking population who died at an average age of 35, and 38 children aged from babies to 12-year-olds.

Out of 171 Vikings, 83 adults were found to have holes in their teeth caused by dental decay.

Previous research has found three per cent of Vikings who invaded Scotland had similar cavities which could have caused extreme pain if they reached the nerve inside the tooth.

Around five per cent of the teeth which the Vikings should have had were lost before death, with researchers believing many were pulled out through frustration over dental pain.

Dr Bertillson said: 'Vikings ate very starchy foods like bread and porridge, which were bad for their teeth, and the water wasn't fit to drink, so they had beer, which contributes to teeth decay, as does mead.

'They also used honey to sweeten food and consumed fruit, so they were always going to get cavities.'

The study also found evidence of a male Viking filing horizontal grooves into his front teeth, which has been seen before, and may have been a sign of status, and done before going off to war.

The Vikings may not have had toothbrushes but they seem to have had awareness of dental hygiene, with marks on the teeth showing they had used toothpicks rather like modern-day floss to remove food from between their teeth.

An abscess found in one female Viking may have killed her in her early thirties, the researchers suggest, as it was bad enough for the infection to potentially cause sepsis or swelling which blocked her airway and stopped her breathing.

Overbites and crowded mouths were less common among Vikings, perhaps because their lower jaws grew larger to consume the harder, coarser food which was part of their diet.

The researchers found 29 per cent of the Vikings whose teeth were analysed had tooth infections.