The stereotypical image of the fearless Scandinavian warriors, whom we now imagine as blonde fighters with pale skin, will probably get a real blow. The scientists performed the largest DNA scan to date from the remains of the Vikings and found that they actually looked different than we had ever thought. This was stated by the website Science Alert.
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A total of 442 Viking skeletons, which were found throughout Europe, were examined. The DNA of these remains revealed that many Vikings had dark hair, not blonde hair. “The results change the perception of who the Viking was. Until now, we basically didn’t know what they looked like, “said evolutionary geneticist Eske Willerslev, who works at the University of Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen. “History books will need to be updated,” he added.
In a new study – the largest genetic analysis of Vikings to date – Willerslev led a team of dozens of scientists who studied the remains of Viking skeletons obtained from archaeological sites in Scandinavia, Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Russia and other countries. Most of the skeletal remains date from about 793-1066 AD.
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DNA scanning also revealed that before and during the Viking Age, genetic information from Asia, southern Europe, or the British Isles entered the bloodlines of the original Vikings.
The individual Viking nations were divided according to where their location was. “The Danish Vikings went to England, while the Swedish Vikings went to the Baltics and the Norwegian Vikings to Ireland, Iceland and Greenland,” said Ashot Margaryan of the University of Copenhagen. According to him, some tribes of Vikings were more isolated and some more traveled. That is why more genetic information flowed from other nations. For example, some analyzes say that about six percent of Britain’s population has Viking DNA, compared to 10 percent in Sweden.
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