A very interesting study was published earlier this week in Nature and here is a nice blurb about it in National Geographic.
Long and short:
In other words Vikings were bound by a shared culture...The genetic data confirms what researchers long suspected from historical and archaeological evidence, which paints a picture of Vikings as a diverse group unbound by nation or ethnicity.
Originally Posted by Mand'alor The Destroyer
This article seems strange to me.
It sets up this idea that society has a view of vikings being "genetically pure" of only Scandinavian heritage, and ascribes a quality of ethno-nationalist white racism to society's views of Vikings.
Yet, none of that is what I've ever been taught about Vikings, or thought of them as. I'm sure there's a small segment of society called nazis that hold that view, but it's certainly not what I'd consider to be a conventional view commonly held by most people today. Honestly, to me it looks like they're trying to take snowflake-sized-portion of characteristics from the 1880s understanding of Vikings, enlarge it, and apply it to today's society just so they can write an article about their "wokeness".
Next part....so I go into this article expecting them to blow my mind with some discovery that the Vikings coopted African tribesmen or some shit, and their ground-breaking discovery is that Vikings slept with...get this...the people the conquered. [sarcasm]Whoa! Bllghhhh..mind blown! Far out![/sarcasm] You know, like every other group in history that invaded territory, and how we as society understood the Vikings to live as (and have even romanticized them as over the last few decades in fiction work). Not only that....the people they conquered and slept with? Yeah, they're white people.
Way to blow apart the white nationalism you're ascribing to society by proving that white people slept with white people. Man, first some dude makes his name by writing a shattering article a few weeks ago about how oppressive governments spy on dissidents, and now this piece of revolutionary, history-changing work hits the presses.
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
Yea, I forgot, I had a note in my brain to mention, "Ignore the very stupid white nationalism comment at the start of this article." Because it is stupid.
That said, it's not just that the genetic makeup is from people they conquered. The genetic makeup suggests long-term interactions and assimilation of non-Scandinavian peoples into viking culture and viking cultural centers. Which is quite fascinating, because it does suggest that viking culture had more to offer than simply raiding and pillaging. There were clearly aspects of it that allowed it to be a dominant culture even during the time of a very large Roman culture.
Importantly, while you and I do not think of it this way, many people still think about 'cultures' like Vikings or even Romans as being relatively homogeneous groups based on shared ancestry (i.e., true 'tribes'). As opposed to being cultures where people from disparate genetic backgrounds are brought together by shared experience, language, trade, etc. Humans are pretty hard-wired to be tribalist...it's borne out of our family units. So in a broad, general way, people tend to scale up that thinking. (Insert some joke about how us both being DINKs makes it so that we do not think about 'tribal' units in this way.)
The actual article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8 - Is a very nicely written and thorough piece the discussion summarizes everything nicely (the numbers you see after some words are references to citations within the article):
Our genomic analyses shed light on long-standing questions raised by historical sources and archaeological evidence from the Viking Age. We largely confirm the long-argued movements of Vikings outside Scandinavia: Vikings from present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden going to Britain, the islands of the North Atlantic, and sailing east towards the Baltic region and beyond, respectively. However, we also see ancient Swedish-like and Finnish-like ancestry in the westernmost fringes of Europe, and Danish-like ancestry in the east, defying modern historical groupings. It is likely that many such individuals were from communities with mixed ancestries, thrown together by complex trading, raiding and settling networks that crossed cultures and the continent.
During the Viking Age, different parts of Scandinavia were not evenly connected, leading to clear genetic structure in the region. Scandinavia probably comprised a limited number of transport zones and maritime enclaves46 with active external contacts, and limited external gene flow into the rest of the Scandinavian landmass. Some Viking Age Scandinavian locations are relatively homogeneous—particularly mid-Norway, Jutland and the Atlantic settlements. This contrasts with the strong genetic variation of populous coastal and southern trading communities such as in the islands of Gotland and Öland47,48,49. The high genetic heterogeneity in coastal communities implies increased population size, extending a previously proposed10 urbanization model for the Late Viking Age city of Sigtuna (which suggested that more-cosmopolitan trading centres were already present at the end of the Viking Age in Northern Europe) both spatially and further back in time. The formation of large-scale trading and cultural networks that spread people, goods and warfare took time to affect the heartlands of Scandinavia, which retained pre-existing genetic differences into the Medieval period.
Finally, our findings show that Vikings were not simply a direct continuation of Scandinavian Iron Age groups. Instead, we observe gene flow from the south and east into Scandinavia, starting in the Iron Age and continuing throughout the duration of the Viking Age, from an increasing number of sources. Many Viking Age individuals—both within and outside Scandinavia—have high levels of non-Scandinavian ancestry, which suggests ongoing gene flow across Europe.
Last edited by RevolverRob; 09-25-2020 at 11:25 AM.
I agree. That was sort of a "Ummm, yeah....." article.
I thought that was kind of a "given", particularly during that time period before the rise of nationhood/nationalism and it was everything I had always been taught and understood.
All of the major historical groups were culturally unique, not genetically unique. Particularly if they were wide ranging or geographically large. Romans, Persians, Greeks, Egyptians, Vikings, Huns, etc.
I would never have thought that a Roman Legionnaire would always be genetically Italian or a Greek Hoplite always genetically Greek. We have historical documents showing they weren't. Why would we have expected Vikings to be anything different?
Macedonian Greeks, Roman Celts, Irish Vikings shouldn't be like "man bites dog".
Now having Sub Saharan African Vikings or Han Chinese Romans or Native American Egyptians, that would be pretty surprising.
I always understood that the Vikings were much more effective as traders/explorers than they were as conquerors/empire builders and as such, like America, their cultural influence would have been felt as much in their successes financially as in their ability to subjugate others. People would want to come to Viking trading centers to make money and usually assimilate into the local culture. The reason that we have always known them more as invading Vikings is because that is predominantly how they were recorded by those who were writing the histories that survived. (As in the raided monasteries)
I thought that raiding wasn't their primary focus or means of support, it was just something they did as a "side hustle" until the Medieval Warm Period when there was a significant surplus in military aged males with a need for farmland for expansion.
But I may be misremembering. That isn't my primary vocation.
The author has never got laid before evidently.
Pussy is pussy.
A lot of history clears right up when you understand that.
Yes, but some is better than others.
One of several reasons to go Aviking.
Scandinavians implies blondes, what if they pass their genes on?
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Not another dime.
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