Leprosy ‘brought to UK by Viking squirrels’

♦ The Vikings brought us shipbuilding, skiing, days of the week and Danelaw. But their squirrels might have been responsible for inflicting leprosy on Britain for hundreds of years.

Cambridge University scientists believe that Scandinavian squirrels hosting bacteria may have been carried across the North Sea by Vikings who kept the animals as pets and traded their fur. Analysis of the skull of a medieval woman unearthed in Hoxne, Suffolk, showed she suffered the same strain of leprosy as that identified in skeletal remains in medieval Denmark and Sweden.

“It is possible that this strain of leprosy was proliferated in the South East of England by contact with highly prized squirrel pelts and meat, traded by the Vikings at the time this woman was alive,” said Sarah Inskip, research associate at St John’s College, Cambridge. Denmark and Sweden had strong trade connections with Britain in the medieval period, with King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth significant ports for fur imports.

The last case of human leprosy in the British Isles was more than 200 years ago, but a recent study demonstrated leprosy infection in red squirrels on Brownsea Island in Dorset.

“Research has already established that leprosy can be passed from armadillos to humans, so that it may also come from squirrels is an interesting idea,” said Ms Inskip. The research was published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology.