Iceland's founding fathers underwent a rapid, 1000-year genetic shift

Science Mag ^ | May 31, 2018 | Michael Price

[SunkenCiv]

If modern Icelanders came face-to-face with their founding fathers, they'd be hard-pressed to see much family resemblance, according to a new study. That's because today's Icelanders have a much higher proportion of Scandinavian genes than their distant ancestors did, suggesting the islanders underwent a remarkably rapid genetic shift over the past thousand years... Medieval histories suggest Iceland was first settled between 870 C.E. and 930 C.E. by seafaring Vikings and the people they enslaved, who possessed a mélange of genes from what is now Norway and the British Isles. For the next thousand years, the population of Iceland remained relatively small and isolated, hovering between about 10,000 and 50,000. Impeccable genealogical records and broad genetic sampling have made Icelanders -- who now number 330,000 -- a model population for geneticists hoping to connect the dots between gene variants and traits. Looking to build on the previous research, a team led by geneticist S. Sunna Ebenesersdóttir, of the University of Iceland and the biopharmaceutical company deCODE Genetics, both in Reykjavik, analyzed the whole genomes of 27 ancient Icelanders whose skeletal remains were found in burial sites across the island... Sequencing revealed that the settlers had a roughly even split of Norse (from what are today Norway and Sweden) and Gaelic (from what are now Ireland and Scotland) ancestry... contemporary Icelanders, on average, draw about 70% of their genes from Norse ancestry.

[Vigilanteman]

According to Jared Diamond, featured in a TED talk here, few Greenlanders resettled in Iceland. Most of them just faced so many hard winters in succession that they starved to death.

I'd take him as a source over Michael Mann any day (your first link).

[SuperLuminal]

I never dignify (by reading) anything that contains phrases like “...between 870 C.E. and 930 C.E....”

[SunkenCiv]

Somewhere I thought I had a new topic to post, about the most recent dated finds showing pre-eruption (early 9th c) habitation, I’ll keep looking. Here’s the map link I had open in another window.

http://www.map-library.com/maps/maps-of-europe/maps-of-iceland/large-detailed-political-and-administrative-map-of-iceland-with-all-roads-cities-and-airports.jpg