Introduction
With the ease of travel fo historical migration of people around the world, modern people could be excused for thinking that most populations now have a more genetically diversified genetic history than they had in their purportedly more isolated past.
However, a recent study with 2,000 year-old DNA samples that links Viking DNA to contemporary Scandinavia shows the opposite.
Viking age Scandinavian had a far wider genetic diversity
People of European origin frequently have trace amounts of Neanderthal DNA that was found in Germany in their genomes indicating that some interactions between distinct groups of people have a long lasting impact on the genes o their descendants.
Sometimes though the genetic evidence of long ago exchanges becomes lost over time. According to a recent study, that appears to be what took place in Scandinavia, which today consists of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, after the Viking Age.
Paleo geneticist Ricardo Rodriguez-Varela and and his associates at Stockholm University and the Centre for Paleo genetics examined 2,000-year-old DNA samples taken from individuals interred at sites around Scandinavia.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/scientists-raid-viking-dna-explore-genetic-roots
The researchers followed the evolution of the Scandinavian genome over time and the impact of immigration on the region’s gene pool.
Genome Diversity with immigrant from eastern Baltic coast, Britain and Ireland
Approximately 300 genomes from individuals buried in Scandinavia over the past 2,000 years were compared by the researchers to the genomes of more than 16,000 modern Scandinavians and more than 9,000 individuals whose ancestors originated from other regions of Europe and western Asia.
They discovered that compared to contemporary Scandinavia, Viking Age Scandinavia had a far wider genetic diversity.
The genomes of individuals from the Viking Age and early Middle Ages Scandinavia were shown to contain lineage from the eastern Baltic coast, the extreme southern tip of Europe, Britain and Ireland.
The diversity of the Viking Age is not altogether unexpected comparable findings from a prior study suggested that the ancient Scandinavian people exchanged DNA rather freely with the other people they encountered, sometimes with everyone’s consent and sometimes not.
As a result, Viking civilisation was remarkably cosmopolitan and far from homogeneous, especially in large cities. Travel and trade by sea were vital to the Viking Era.
However it appears from the DNA of those who lived at the time that the Vikings were not the only ones who sowed wild oats abroad. Scandinavia received a significant influx of immigrants from other countries, enough to alter the region’s genetic makeup.
Decline in diverse gene pool
More astonishingly, the genetic remnants of those contacts had largely vanished a few centuries after the end of the Viking Age. Whether they were traders, missionaries, or enslaved captives, those who arrived to Scandinavia during the height of Viking raiding and trading have all but disappeared from the gene pool of contemporary Scandinavia.
According to co-author of the paper and geneticist at Stockholm University Anders Gotherstrom, the decline in current levels of external ancestry suggests that the Viking period migrants got fewer children, or somehow contributed proportionally less to the gene pool than the people who were already in Scandinavia.
Before the raids on Ireland’s Lindisfarne Monastery in 793 C.E. signalled the beginning of a new era of expansion, Scandinavian kings had already built trade networks that extended as far as the Middle East and hired mercenaries in far-flung locations like Constantinople(Istanbul, Turkey).
Scandinavia saw the emergence of a number of tiny kingdoms not long after the Roman Empire collapsed. The newly established ruling class required wealth, and this requirement, coupled with a number of other reasons, such as climatic changes, helped to crate the Viking Age.
Archaeologists have discovered Arabic letters woven into the fabric of clothes in Viking boat burials, demonstrating the regular occurrence of cultural interchange.
Because of human nature, some of the trade must have also been personal at times. But many generations later, the majority of these unique tales of how individuals interacted with one another and met don’t make it into the genome.
The signal isn’t strong enough, and eventually it disappears into the background and is lost. Rather, rather than individual ties, a population’s gene pool indicates significant, long term trends.
How could we interpret this
It may come as no surprise that populations from all around Europe, within the reach of trade networks, rather than from even farther away, influenced the Viking gene pool the most.
Also not surprisingly, Scandinavian heritage from immigration from the Baltic and southern Europe vanished within a few centuries fo the Viking Age. The gene pool in Scandinavia was sufficiently influenced by these immigrants to last a few centuries, but not longer.
Modern Scandinavian genomes do, however, nonetheless include trace quantities of British and Irish heritage. Given the scope of Norse efforts in the British Isles beginning in the 8th century. And reaching a climax in the North Sea Empire in the 11th century.
According to the study, this is maybe not surprising, in other regions, interactions with other individuals were less intense and didn’t continue as long. Remember this. Genomes typically only illustrate the broadest, most general aspects of human interactions.
Even significant historical events are lost. Details are missing. Archaeology and written history also contribute to the story, which is told in part by DNA. These lines of information are best used together to comprehend the past.
In Gotland and central Sweden, for instance, the researchers discovered that the rise in eastern Baltic ancestry coincided with the timing of treaties and other events.
Without written records, we wouldn’t be able to determine what drew individuals from the Baltic to Sweden. Without genetic history, we wouldn’t be able to determine the significant effects of such trade agreements and treaties on the population.
Ancient genomes cast doubt on the notion that the Vikings exerted influence on the rest of the world without receiving any reciprocal influence. Migration left its mark in Scandinavia, indicating that we shouldn’t see the Vikings as actors, and everyone in their way as passive.
Those changes throughout the Viking Age also had an effect on Scandinavia. Even though such genetic hits have since been lost, it is also evident that many people in contemporary Scandinavian are derived from immigrants.
Closure
In Viking Age, Viking DNA was more diverse and complex across the Europe because of immigrants and trade. Then declined. Researchers have been finding why.
DNA tells one piece of the story, and archaeology and written history tell other pieces. Many towns and villages in England have names that date back to the Vikings.
Even with new high technology of DNA sequencing, on the same thing, there could be many interpretations. Interpretations can be changeable, too
Source: Nationalgeographic, inverse
