World's largest DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren't
all Scandinavian

Date:
September 16, 2020
Source:
St John's College, University of Cambridge
Summary:
Invaders, pirates, warriors - the history books taught us
that Vikings were brutal predators who travelled by sea from
Scandinavia to pillage and raid their way across Europe and
beyond. Now cutting-edge DNA sequencing of more than 400 Viking
skeletons from archaeological sites scattered across Europe and
Greenland will rewrite the history books.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Invaders, pirates, warriors -- the history books taught us that Vikings
were brutal predators who travelled by sea from Scandinavia to pillage
and raid their way across Europe and beyond.


==========================================================================
Now cutting-edge DNA sequencing of more than 400 Viking skeletons from archaeological sites scattered across Europe and Greenland will rewrite
the history books as it has shown:
* Skeletons from famous Viking burial sites in Scotland were
actually local
people who could have taken on Viking identities and were buried
as Vikings.

* Many Vikings actually had brown hair not blonde hair.

* Viking identity was not limited to people with Scandinavian genetic
ancestry. The study shows the genetic history of Scandinavia was
influenced by foreign genes from Asia and Southern Europe before
the Viking Age.

* Early Viking Age raiding parties were an activity for locals
and included
close family members.

* The genetic legacy in the UK has left the population with up to
six per
cent Viking DNA.

The six-year research project, published in Nature today (16 September
2020), debunks the modern image of Vikings and was led by Professor
Eske Willerslev, a Fellow of St John's College, University of Cambridge,
and director of The Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, University
of Copenhagen.

He said: "We have this image of well-connected Vikings mixing with
each other, trading and going on raiding parties to fight Kings across
Europe because this is what we see on television and read in books --
but genetically we have shown for the first time that it wasn't that kind
of world. This study changes the perception of who a Viking actually
was -- no one could have predicted these significant gene flows into Scandinavia from Southern Europe and Asia happened before and during the
Viking Age." The word Viking comes from the Scandinavian term 'vikingr' meaning 'pirate'.

The Viking Age generally refers to the period from A.D. 800, a few
years after the earliest recorded raid, until the 1050s, a few years
before the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. The Vikings changed
the political and genetic course of Europe and beyond: Cnut the Great
became the King of England, Leif Eriksson is believed to have been the
first European to reach North America - - 500 years before Christopher
Columbus -- and Olaf Tryggvason is credited with taking Christianity to
Norway. Many expeditions involved raiding monasteries and cities along
the coastal settlements of Europe but the goal of trading goods like fur,
tusks and seal fat were often the more pragmatic aim.

Professor Willerslev added: "We didn't know genetically what they actually looked like until now. We found genetic differences between different
Viking populations within Scandinavia which shows Viking groups in the
region were far more isolated than previously believed. Our research
even debunks the modern image of Vikings with blonde hair as many had
brown hair and were influenced by genetic influx from the outside of Scandinavia." The team of international academics sequenced the whole
genomes of 442 mostly Viking Age men, women, children and babies from
their teeth and petrous bones found in Viking cemeteries. They analysed
the DNA from the remains from a boat burial in Estonia and discovered
four Viking brothers died the same day. The scientists have also revealed
male skeletons from a Viking burial site in Orkney, Scotland, were not
actually genetically Vikings despite being buried with swords and other
Viking memorabilia.



========================================================================== There wasn't a word for Scandinavia during the Viking Age -- that
came later.

But the research study shows that the Vikings from what is now Norway
travelled to Ireland, Scotland, Iceland and Greenland. The Vikings from
what is now Denmark travelled to England. And Vikings from what is now
Sweden went to the Baltic countries on their all male 'raiding parties'.

Dr Ashot Margaryan, Assistant Professor at the Section for Evolutionary Genomics, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen and first author
of the paper, said: "We carried out the largest ever DNA analysis of
Viking remains to explore how they fit into the genetic picture of
Ancient Europeans before the Viking Age. The results were startling
and some answer long-standing historical questions and confirm previous assumptions that lacked evidence.

"We discovered that a Viking raiding party expedition included close
family members as we discovered four brothers in one boat burial in
Estonia who died the same day. The rest of the occupants of the boat were genetically similar suggesting that they all likely came from a small
town or village somewhere in Sweden." DNA from the Viking remains were
shotgun sequenced from sites in Greenland, Ukraine, The United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Poland and Russia.

Professor Martin Sikora, a lead author of the paper and an Associate
Professor at the Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen,
said: "We found that Vikings weren't just Scandinavians in their
genetic ancestry, as we analysed genetic influences in their DNA from
Southern Europe and Asia which has never been contemplated before. Many
Vikings have high levels of non-Scandinavian ancestry, both within and
outside Scandinavia, which suggest ongoing gene flow across Europe."
The team's analysis also found that genetically Pictish people 'became'
Vikings without genetically mixing with Scandinavians. The Picts were Celtic-speaking people who lived in what is today eastern and northern
Scotland during the Late British Iron Age and Early Medieval periods.



==========================================================================
Dr Daniel Lawson, lead author from The University of Bristol, explained: "Individuals with two genetically British parents who had Viking burials
were found in Orkney and Norway. This is a different side of the cultural relationship from Viking raiding and pillaging." The Viking Age altered
the political, cultural and demographic map of Europe in ways that are
still evident today in place names, surnames and modern genetics.

Professor So/ren Sindbaek, an archaeologist from Moesgaard Museum
in Denmark who collaborated on the ground-breaking paper, explained: "Scandinavian diasporas established trade and settlement stretching
from the American continent to the Asian steppe. They exported ideas, technologies, language, beliefs and practices and developed new
socio-political structures. Importantly our results show that 'Viking'
identity was not limited to people with Scandinavian genetic ancestry. Two Orkney skeletons who were buried with Viking swords in Viking style graves
are genetically similar to present-day Irish and Scottish people and
could be the earliest Pictish genomes ever studied." Assistant Professor Fernando Racimo, also a lead author based at the GeoGenetics Centre in
the University of Copenhagen, stressed how valuable the dataset is for
the study of the complex traits and natural selection in the past. He explained: This is the first time we can take a detailed look at the
evolution of variants under natural selection in the last 2,000 years
of European history. The Viking genomes allow us to disentangle how
selection unfolded before, during and after the Viking movements across
Europe, affecting genes associated with important traits like immunity, pigmentation and metabolism. We can also begin to infer the physical
appearance of ancient Vikings and compare them to Scandinavians today."
The genetic legacy of the Viking Age lives on today with six per cent
of people of the UK population predicted to have Viking DNA in their
genes compared to 10 per cent in Sweden.

Professor Willeslev concluded: "The results change the perception of
who a Viking actually was. The history books will need to be updated."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
St_John's_College,_University_of_Cambridge. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Margaryan, A., Lawson, D.J., Sikora, M. et al. Population genomics
of the
Viking world. Nature, 2020 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2688-8 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200916113544.htm

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