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To date, everything we know about the Vikings comes from written sources, often recorded several hundred years after the events occurred, or through archaeological finds and chemical analysis of remains.
Now a large research team has mapped genes from more than 400 skeletal finds, from the Bronze Age onwards. And DNA technology provides an even more nuanced picture of history than it has been before.
– The most important thing we have come to is that there were small genetic differences between the people who lived in what is now Denmark, Sweden and Norway as early as the Viking age, says Ashot Margaryan, a geneticist at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of an article published in the scientific journal Nature today.
Travel footprints
Differences in DNA mean that researchers can now trace how people have moved in northern Europe, 1,000 years after their death.
The results confirm much of what archaeologists have already concluded; The Norwegian Vikings traveled mainly west to Ireland and Greenland, the Danes colonized the British Isles, and the people of present-day Sweden generally traveled east to the Baltic states and Russia.
However, DNA research shows that there are many exceptions to the rule. You will find Danish Vikings in Österled and people of “Swedish” descent in the west.
Others, again, seem to have perceived themselves as Vikings despite the fact that they had no genetic connection to the Nordic countries. Researchers have analyzed the bones of typical Viking tombs on the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland and have found that the people there show no relationship to Scandinavia.
Moving out
At the same time, the DNA study shows that many people have moved to Scandinavia during the same period. In present-day Sweden there is an influx from Finland and the Baltic countries, while Denmark received people from the south, including the British Isles.
– We see that people have entered both from the south and the east, but we cannot say if they are people who have voluntarily settled to trade, for example, or if they are slaves who were brought here by force, he says. Ashot Margaryan.
The most varied population can be found in places along the trade routes of that era. People who lived in Fröjel and Kopparsvik on Viking-era Gotland, for example, seem to have been more closely related to Danes, British, and Finns than to people in present-day Sweden.
In contrast, those who lived far from places of trade, including inland Småland, seemed to have hardly been affected by any genetic influence during the Viking era.
Deaths
The Nature article also reveals that the Norse ability to tolerate milk fully developed only during the Viking era and not long earlier than previously thought.
Modern DNA technology also makes it possible to reveal details of individual human destinies. It turns out, for example, that four of the roughly 40 Mälardalen warriors who died in battle and laid a ship grave at Ösel in Estonia in the 700s were brothers.
