I know this is r/askhistorians, but I’d like to give a little context to this image as a dentist.

I see two things in this image that could be interpreted as teeth being filed down, but I think they a from two separate things, and only one of them needs an explanation from a historian.

First, there are the horizontal score marks on the upper teeth near where the gum line would be. There is a natural mechanism called abfraction that can creat similar looking “notches” in teeth near the gumline, but this looks artificial to me. As in, I think they were made on purpose with a decorative intent, although I can’t rule out that it caused as a byproduct of some other activity - using teeth as a tool, playing an instrument, etc. Those marks look fairly shallow, likely still within the enamel layer of the tooth. That might have caused some temporary sensitivity, but I wouldn’t expect it to cause any long term problems.

The other thing I see is how the teeth have been shortened and flattened on their edges. I would guess maybe 4-5mm of tooth structure has been lost from the top teeth and maybe 3-4mm from the bottom teeth. However, this looks like standard wear as the result of teeth grinding. This is a severe case, but I probably see at least one person a week with teeth that have have been worn this much. This can cause problems, but I wouldn’t expect this individual to be having any issues. Their bone looks healthy (at least from what I can see), and there isn’t enough wear for there to be nerve exposure, which can happen in cases even more severe than this. This happens slowly over time, and this person was probably not even aware of how drastically they had shortened their teeth.

So there might be a Viking related explanation for the horizontal scoring, but I don’t think we need a historian to explain the shortened teeth. I just wanted to make sure that was clear.