WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Portal) – The Viking Age, from the 8th to the 11th centuries AD, left a lasting mark on the genetics of modern-day Scandinavians, according to scientists, who also documented the outsized genetic influence of women engaged in conquests in the region came from Norse men in Europe.
A study released Thursday examined the genetic dynamics of people in Norway, Sweden and Denmark going back two millennia, based on 297 genomes from ancient human remains and data from 16,638 modern Scandinavian men and women.
The results provided insight into migration patterns and gene flow during the Viking Age, when Norsemen traveled aboard wooden longships from Scandinavia, staged raids and monastic looting across a wide region, and even reached North America.
The study found that females from the eastern Baltic Sea region, and to a lesser extent from the British and Irish Isles, contributed more to the Scandinavian gene pool than males from those regions during this period.
“We have no way from our data to determine the number of women involved, or whether these women of East Baltic and British-Irish ancestry were in Scandinavia voluntarily or involuntarily,” said molecular archaeologist Ricardo Rodriguez-Varela of Stockholm University’s Center for Paleogenetics of the study published in the journal Cell.
Historians have documented the Viking slave trade, when seafarers conquered numerous territories and established extensive trade networks.
“Slaves are a group of several that could explain the patterns. We just don’t know exactly who these people were,” added molecular archaeologist and study co-author Anders Gotherstrom of the Center for Paleogenetics.
The Viking Age spanned from about 750 to 1050 AD. An important early event was a devastating Viking raid in 793 on a Christian monastery on the English island of Lindisfarne, with later attacks in numerous places including Paris and Constantinople and commercial contacts to the Middle East.
The study showed that British-Irish ancestry had been widespread in Scandinavia since the Viking Age. Ancestors from the eastern Baltics—present-day Lithuania and parts of western Russia and perhaps Ukraine—were concentrated in central Sweden and on Gotland, Sweden’s largest island. Ancestry from southern European locations such as Sardinia was concentrated among people of southern Scandinavia.
“The Viking Age is associated with a significant increase in the flow of goods, customs, technology and people to and from Scandinavia,” said Rodriguez-Varela.
“It was Scandinavian societies, originally pagan but eventually Christian, who based their economies on small farms, internal and external trade, and plunder. The Vikings were the first people to visit four continents,” Gotherstrom added.
It has been established that the genetic contribution from outsiders in the Scandinavians diminished after the Viking Age.
The researchers wrote that their findings “provide preliminary evidence that gene flow into Scandinavia from East Baltic ancestry, and also to a lesser extent from British-Irish ancestry, was female”.
“The increase in East Baltic ancestry in these regions during the Viking Age is consistent with historical sources attesting to contacts such as tribute relationships and treaties. Therefore, with the available data, we see no evidence that women were kidnapped and brought back during the raids,” Rodriguez-Varela said.
Men who served as Christian missionaries or monks may also have arrived in Scandinavia during this period, but may not have contributed much to the gene pool, the researchers added.
The oldest of the ancient genomes used in the study dates from the first century AD and the youngest from the 19th century. Some ancient genomes came from people who died aboard the large Swedish warship Kronan, which was sunk in battle in 1676. Others came from Sandby borg, a fortress on the Swedish island of Öland where a massacre appears to have taken place in the 5th century, and from human remains in ceremonial burials of Viking ships.
“Vikings were an interesting group of people who had existed for about two and a half centuries and influenced the world in ways that we have yet to understand,” Gotherstrom said.
Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
Our standards: The Thomson Portal Trust Principles.