Bones study reveals many Vikings were not fromScandinavia

Not all Vikings were from Scandinavia, not all of them were blonde, and up to 6% of the UK population may have Viking DNA in their genes, a new study suggests.

Researchers say the results of a six-year project debunk the modern image of Vikings as brutal predators who travelled by sea from Scandinavia to pillage and raid their way across Europe and beyond.

DNA sequencing of more than 400 Viking skeletons from archaeological sites scattered across Europe and Greenland has shed new light on what we know about them.

Professor Eske Willerslev, a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge University – and director of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, University of Copenhagen – led the study.

He said: “We have this image of well-connected Vikings mixing with each other, trading and going on raiding parties to fight kings across

Europe because this is what we see on television and read in books.”

According to the research published in Nature, male skeletons from a Viking burial site in Orkney were not actually genetically Vikings despite being buried with swords and other Viking memorabilia.

Professor Martin Sikora, a lead author of the paper and an Associate Professor at the Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen, said: “Many Vikings have high levels of non-Scandinavian ancestry, both within and outside Scandinavia, which suggest ongoing gene flow across Europe.”

The research team also found that genetically Pictish people became Vikings without genetically mixing with Scandinavians.

The Picts were Celtic-speaking people who lived in what is today eastern and northern Scotland during the Late British Iron Age and Early Medieval periods.

The Viking Age generally refers to the period from 800AD until the 1050s.