“Vikings are, genetically, not purely Scandinavian,” said Willerslev. The study also drew on existing data from more than 1,000 ancient individuals from non-Viking times, and 3,855 people living today.Īmong their results the team found that from the iron age, southern European genes entered Denmark and then spread north, while – to a lesser extent – genes from Asia entered Sweden. Writing in the journal Nature, Willerslev and colleagues report how they sequenced the genomes of 442 humans who lived across Europe between about 2,400BC and 1,600AD, with the majority from the Viking age – a period that stretched from around 750AD to 1050AD.
“Vikings were not restricted to blond Scandinavians,” said Prof Eske Willerslev, a co-author of the research from the University of Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen. What’s more, while some were born Vikings, others adopted the culture – or perhaps had it thrust upon them.
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