We'll get FReeper LostTribe's take on this.
Hello Blam!
On a quick read I don't have any problem with Heyerdahls premise. (Have printed it out for more careful reading.) The headline sounds right on target, as this where the LostTribes disappeared and the Celts appeared. But the people who lived there THEN are not the people who live there NOW, as the Celts were just passing though. I'll get back after I've studied it more carefully.
The single disconnect is the date he places on the Chinese mummies. It is about a thousand years earlier than the 620 BC date when the Celts (as we know them) first appeared in recorded history in northern Iraq, west of the Caspian Sea, and all around the Black sea. There are 2 obvious possible explanations for the disparity.
(1) The Chinese carbon dating is wrong. This always has to be considered. According to my Jewish Biblical Archeology professor at Oxford who managed digs in Palestine, a swing of a thousand years in carbon dating thereabouts is not at all unusual. From his extensive real-life dig experience he was always skeptical of carbon dates.
(2) If the dates are correct, these "blond haired Vikings" could be Israelites from the first bail-out of their Egyptian captivity. The Bible documents that following Josephs rein, when political conditions began to sour, one of Judahs sons plus members of the Tribes of Judah, Dan, and ASHER bailed out of Egypt by sea. Egyptian leaders from "upper" Egypt were coming down (northward) and taking over what Joseph had created, bringing about the bad times for the Israelites which are documented in such great detail in the OT.
These "early leaver" Israelites sailed first to the Eastern Med, then Westward to form settlements in Spain, then on to Ireland. Perhaps some of them stayed behind in the East and went northward into China? The dates and peoples do seem to match. If true, the "Vikings" in China would not be from the Lost Tribes of Israel as we think of them, but their much earlier cousins direct from Egypt.
In terms of the Norwegians, since Thor is dating them from Azerbaijan in early AD, just after the time of Christ, they could well be from either the earlier "Vikings" direct from Egypt, or from the Lost Tribes who appeared in that same region much later.
That's my first pass at it. What do you think?