In popular imagination, the term Viking conjures up images of
fierce, blond-haired, blue-eyed men
sailing the seas and plundering coastal towns.
But were the Vikings really
the pure-bred race that some people would like to believe?
Finally, evolutionary geneticists have some answers.
It all kind of got kicked off
when we managed to sequence the first ancient human genome.
Because that gave us an enormous amount of data
from single individuals that we can use to infer the human past.
After we saw, well, this is possible
we decided, well, let's go and explore the human past in the world.
How did we become who we are today?
Over a period of six years, researchers analysed human remains
found at more than 80 archaeological sites
including Viking burials.
To understand the past through ancient DNA,
the team sequenced the genomes of 442 men, women, children,
and babies from the Viking Age.
So first, of course, we have to pick up
bones, teeth, archaeological remains that we want to analyse.
We and others have found that really the best possible material
that you can use in terms of preservation of the DNA will be maybe the teeth.
So we sampled the teeth.
Or then there's this other one that is called the Petrous bone,
which is this inner ear bone, which is a very, very hard bone
that also preserves the human DNA really, really well.
You take that tooth, you cut it up.
Usually we cut off the root and then drill into it,
and then you get this powder and then you use that to extract DNA
from the sample and then prepare it in the laboratory
for eventually going through the sequencing machine.
The researchers then compared these ancient people's DNA
with already published DNA sequences from nearly 4,000 modern-day people
and from more than 1,000 ancient individuals.
The typical Viking, right, is portrayed as a big, strong, blond Scandinavian.
But, you know, blondness was actually less common
in the Viking period than it is in Scandinavia today.
This largest ever DNA analysis of Viking remains
has shown that they carried genes from Southern Europe and Asia.
The Viking period, we can see it's characterised by
an enormous interest in the world from the Viking Scandinavians.
But a very limited interest for what is actually going on in Scandinavia.
Their trade routes extended from Canada to Afghanistan,
making the Vikings far more diverse than previously thought.
This intermingling with people from the south and east
diversified their genetic makeup and led to a variety of physical appearances.
You couldn't really say that it is a homogeneous group that was
very just Scandinavian people that look the same everywhere genetically.
There was actually quite a lot of diversity.
Then we can see that the different Viking groups primarily went
to different areas around the world.
So we can see that the Danes primarily went to England, the Norwegians,
they went to Ireland, Iceland, and Greenland.
And the Swedes went to the Baltic.
The study also suggests that the Viking identity wasn't related
to genetic background or ethnicity.
It was more of a social identity.
The Viking phenomena is not only a Scandinavian thing in the sense that
it's not ethnicity that determines whether you're Viking or not,
it's a lifestyle.
So we find Vikings that have no Scandinavian genetics.
So they come in all kinds of different forms.
For example, we had these cases of individuals from Scotland,
from the Orkney Islands, where from all their archaeological context
and the burials were associated with the Viking culture.
But genetically, they very much resembled
to be the kind of earlier indigenous Scottish population.
By doing this research, we're changing the story
and by changing the story, we're also changing our identity.
I see it as something positive
in the sense that at least the debate of identity,
which is also a political debate, at least it's based on real science.
So I think it's important for that debate to have this kind of research.