Viking genetics

[Duncan Head]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/16/dark-hair-was-common-among-vikings-genetic-study-confirms

[Jim Webster]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/16/dark-hair-was-common-among-vikings-genetic-study-confirms

We see in 'England' how Danes and English tend to merge in places.
Also I suspect raiding bands were composed of men who owed allegiance to a leader, and the leader could pick up 'outlaws and broken men' from all over the place

[Andreas Johansson]

The team found these groups roughly map on to present-day Scandinavian countries, although Vikings from south-west Sweden were genetically similar to their peers in Denmark.

Just might have something to do with that when the Scandinavian countries form during the Viking Age, what's now south-west Sweden was part of Denmark.

Anyone who thought all Scandinavians of the era were blond has not read the sagas very attentively.

One is tempted to suspect that the "genes from Asia" didn't come directly from east of the Ural, but were picked up in Eastern Europe, having got there by some steppe migration or other. It's incidentally faintly bizarre to write of "Southern Europe" and "Asia" as if they were commensurate entities.

[Jim Webster]

Yes, I can see we need to understand the original formation.

I have half a memory that they have discovered a 'lot' of 'Irish genetics' in Icelanders. It was suggested that a lot of the original settlers had Irish wives, concubines etc

[Baldie]

How do the Sagas treat bald Vikings?

[Andreas Johansson]

I have half a memory that they have discovered a 'lot' of 'Irish genetics' in Icelanders. It was suggested that a lot of the original settlers had Irish wives, concubines etc

The "Genetics" section on the WP page on "Icelanders" has this to say:

Genetic evidence shows that most DNA lineages found among Icelanders today can be traced to the settlement of Iceland, indicating that there has been relatively little immigration since. This evidence shows that the founder population of Iceland came from Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia: studies of mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomes indicate that 62% of Icelanders' matrilineal ancestry derives from Scotland and Ireland (with most of the rest being from Scandinavia), while 75% of their patrilineal ancestry derives from Scandinavia (with most of the rest being from the Irish and British Isles).

[Imperial Dave]

How do the Sagas treat bald Vikings?

badly.....

[DBS]

Just might have something to do with that when the Scandinavian countries form during the Viking Age, what's now south-west Sweden was part of Denmark.

Furthermore, I also have a vague recollection that, just at the time the Danes first impinge on Roman consciousness with an apparent expansion into Jutland, there is supposedly some archaeological evidence of the existing material culture of Jutland displacing into SW Sweden.  Which one could either argue as displacement of some losing Jutland aboriginal population, or else, if they were already "Danes", an expansion across the water in that direction as well.  (Though I am with Kulikowski and others on the dangers of associating material culture with ethnogenesis too heavily.)

[davidb]

How do the Sagas treat bald Vikings?

badly.....

Ask Jarl Varg

[Imperial Dave]

How do the Sagas treat bald Vikings?

badly.....

Ask Jarl Varg