Researchers say the Viking Age shaped the genetics of today’s Scandinavians.
In an international study published Thursday in the journal Cell, scientists found that DNA from archaeological remains reveals an extraordinary immigration into Scandinavia during this period.
The authors analyzed 297 ancient Scandinavian genomes going back two millennia with the genomic data of 16,638 modern-day Scandinavians.
“Because the geographic origins and dates for all of these individuals were known, it was possible to resolve the evolution of the gene pool to unprecedented levels,” says a press release from Stockholm University, which credits many authors.
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The Viking ship Havhingsten af Glendalough (The Sea Stallion of Glendalough), a replica Viking warship, cast off at the Viking Museum in Roskilde July 1, 2007. (Portal/Scanpix/Bjarke Orsted/File Photo)
The university noted that the analysis revealed a surprising increase in variation during the Viking Age, suggesting that gene flow into Scandinavia was particularly intense during this period.
Females from the eastern Baltic and to a lesser extent from the British and Irish Isles contributed more to the Scandinavian gene pool than males from these regions during this period.
“With this resolution we not only confirm the migration from the Viking Age. We can also trace them back to the eastern Baltic Sea region, the British Irish Islands and southern Europe,” Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela of the Center for Palaeogenetics said in a statement.
“But not all parts of Scandinavia received the same amounts of gene flow from those areas. For example, while British-Irish ancestry spread widely in Scandinavia, Eastern Baltic ancestry reached mainly Gotland and central Sweden.”
He told Portal there was no way of knowing the number of women involved or whether the women of East Baltic and British-Irish ancestry were in Scandinavia voluntarily.
The study also found that British-Irish ancestry had been widespread in Scandinavia since the Viking Age, which spanned from about 750 to 1050 AD
Underwater Excavations of the Ship Kronan (Lars Einarsson/Kalmar County Museum)
The authors said that Eastern Baltic ancestry is more localized to Gotland, Sweden’s largest island, and central Sweden.
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“The increase in East Baltic ancestry in these regions during the Viking Age is consistent with historical sources showing contacts such as tributary relationships and treaties,” said Rodriguez-Varela, one of the study’s leaders. “Therefore, with the available data, we see no evidence that women were kidnapped and brought back in raids.”
While ancestry from southern European locations such as Sardinia has been concentrated to people of southern Scandinavia, the group found that modern Scandinavians have fewer non-local ancestors than samples from the Viking Age.
The university said it was surprised to find that the gene pool had bounced back to where it was before the Viking migration.
The replica Viking ship, the 30-meter (100-foot) long Havhingsten (Seastallion), sails into the fjord of Roskilde after a voyage to Oslo and Tonsberg in Norway August 4, 2006. (Portal/Jens Norgaard Larsen/ Scanpix/file photo)
A recent discovery was the history of the northern Scandinavian gene pool, with the study finding that a genetic component is rare there in central and western Europe.
“We suspected that there was a chronology of the Northern Scandinavian gene pool, and indeed it has been shown that a recent influx of Uralic ancestors into Scandinavia defines much of the northern gene pool,” Rodríguez-Varela said in the university’s publication. “But when it’s new, it’s comparatively so. For example, we know that this Uralic ancestry was already present in northern Scandinavia during the late Viking Age.”
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The study was based on a number of well-known Swedish archaeological sites, including genomes of the 17th-century warship Kronan, which was sunk in battle in 1676.
Others came from Sanbyborg on Öland, Sweden’s second largest island.
“We have been working on a number of smaller studies at various archaeological sites. And at some point it just made sense to combine them into a larger study on the evolution of the Scandinavian gene pool,” says Professor Anders Götherström, a lead scientist who said the study.
Portal contributed to this report.
Julia Musto is a reporter for Fox News and Fox Business Digital.