According to researchers who also recorded the disproportionate genetic effect of women who arrived in the area during Norsemen’s invasions of Europe, the Viking age, which lasted from the eighth to the eleventh centuries AD, left a permanent impression on the genetics of today’s Scandinavians.
Based on data from 16,638 contemporary Scandinavian men and women and 297 ancient human genomes, a study released on Thursday examined the genetic patterns of people in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark dating back two thousand years.
The results shed light on the patterns of migration and gene flow that occurred during the Viking era, when Norsemen travelled from Scandinavia aboard wooden longships, conducted raids and monastic looting across a vast area, and even made it as far as North America.
The study found that females from the east Baltic region and to a lesser extent the British and Irish isles contributed more to the gene pool of Scandinavia than the males from these regions during this period.
‘We have no way to know with our data the number of women involved or if these women with east Baltic and British-Irish ancestries were in Scandinavia voluntarily or involuntarily,’ said molecular archaeologist Ricardo Rodriguez-Varela of Stockholm University’s Center for Palaeogenetics, lead author of the study published in the journal Cell.
Historians have documented slave trading by the Vikings as the seafarers conquered numerous territories and developed extensive trading networks.
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