Genetic analysis reveals Vikings had a wide and diverse family tree

When I told my husband that, his first remark was , "bloody Vikings".

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I've made clear what I'm getting at.

If your ancestors were from Scandinavian migrations to the USA, then most likely they weren’t Vikings.

The Vikings (Pirates) settled in coastal England, Scotland, France, Spain, Sicily. Those folks are the descendants of Vikings

Vikings were “Germanic”. The entire swathe of peoples from Scandinavia (except Finns), to the various German nations including Bavaria, the Netherlands, England were ‘germanic’

The red hair is from Neanderthals, not Celtic or Germanic - which is why the most red-headed nation are the Uralic speaking Mari in what is now Russia

And there are red heads among the Melanesian peoples (the first people out of Africa)

All but the Celts.

The Celts predated the development of the Germanic tribes of northern Europe and settled in the British Isles, Ireland, Gaul and Iberia.

Later, the eastern Germanic tribes entered the British Isles (Angles, Saxons & later Norse, Ireland and Gaul (the Franks), while other Germanic tribes from western Germany entered the “lowlands” like Holland, and still other Germanic tribes had populated “Scandinavia” - including Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.

Ireland and parts of Britain still retain some of the older Celtic origins in their language.

It is also said that the origin of the Kievan Rus was the “Vikings” - Germanic.

In a perverse sense it all sort of confirms Hitler’s “master race” claim that all of Europe was Germanic. The only problem with that claim is time - that time had forever altered people from origins of their far distant ancestors to what they had become, with identities built by their own experiences over hundreds of years - identities including language, customs and values that were no longer universal. It also ignored the pre-Germanic Mediterranean origins of the European people of southern Europe and much of northern Africa (at one time)

And then of course there are the Slavs, which also are not Germanic, though in some parts they merged with Germanic elements that remained when most Germanic tribes had migrated west. The Slavs filled in “Eastern Europe”, including their merger with the Kievan Rus in the area of Moscovy.

If your ancestors were from Scandinavian migrations to the USA, then most likely they weren’t Vikings. The Vikings (Pirates) settled in coastal England, Scotland, France, Spain, Sicily. Those folks are the descendants of Vikings.

For that to be true, one would have to believe that every single “Viking” down to the very last man, woman and child, left Scandinavia never to return. I do not believe that to be supported by fact nor a plausible argument.

If one might say that the Vikings being “pirates” were a distinct group as far as how they lived and made their “living”, they were not genetically different from those in Scandinavia who didn’t raid and remained in Scandinavia. It would be sort of like saying the Puritans (Pilgrims) weren’t genetically English as none of them remained in England because they all left for Plymouth Rock and therefore no one living in England today can possibly trace any ancestry back to the Puritans.

Yes, a good number of Vikings settled and remained in the lands they invaded, in England, most notably in the north (York was long a Viking stronghold and a wide swath of the Midlands of England was called “Daneland”) and of course in Normandy where Vikings settled and adopted the French language and customs to become the Normans who later invaded England pushing out the Anglo-Saxon rulers and then there were the Swedish Vikings who went east to found the Ruse Lands (Russia).

It is also important to consider that contemporarily, at least when it comes to the raids of England, Scotland and Ireland, they were not referred to as “Vikings” but as “Danes”. No one at the time would have sounded the alarm “The Vikings are coming!” but rather would have said, “The Danes are coming!”. But that is not to say they all came from what we now know as Denmark because contemporarily Vikings from Norway were also called “Danes” - Norway, Sweden and Denmark not at the time being distinct kingdoms or countries but rather a loose group of settlements and chieftains sharing a common ancestry, language and religion. And in truth, the Anglo-Saxons came from Northern Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands and are closely related to the Scandinavians and pre-Christian Saxons shared the same Nordic religion as the Vikings and spoke a similar language.

Consider that in Beowulf, one of the most important works of Old English literature written by an Anglo-Saxon poet whose name is long lost, the story is set in Scandavia and Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel.

For what it is worth, my father was born in Norway. A cousin of his still living there some years ago while my father was still living did an extensively and methodically researched family tree that traced my father’s mother’s side of the family back to the 11th century, and yes there was an ancestor who showed up who was the son of a Viking chieftain who was recorded as having raided the lands to the West and had become wealthy as a result but came back to Norway where his progeny still lives today excepting for my grandmother’s line of the family who came to America in the early 1920’s. So yes, I am a decendent, in part from Vikings.

My Norwegian grandmother also long claimed her family were actual descendants of Eric The Red. Of course my dad and I sort of doubted this claim as it she had no proof other than family lore and something on the family crest that hinted to the ancestral connection. But I guess a lot of people claim ancestry to important historical figures – is everyone in America who claims they are ancestors of the Mayflower Pilgrims or of George Washington, actually related? However, her grandfather did have an a very old axe and a shield that may have either been a later reproduction, even if it was old as in medieval, or it may have been the real thing – no one knows but when her grandfather died it should have gone to her but a 2nd cousin took it and it is now lost.

Leftists are trying hard to take the history of westerners away from them