How DNA reveals Vikings never left Scotland – BBC REEL

Vikings conquered many of Scotland's islands, as well as the mainland, in the 8th and 9th Centuries. They came, they conquered, they left, or so the story seemed to go.

Now historians are re-assessing the legacy the Vikings left on islands like Islay, a small island of about 3,000 inhabitants off the west cost of Scotland.

Linguistic and DNA evidence now suggests that the Vikings never really left at all, as BBC Reel's Melissa Hogenboom reports.

Reporter and producer: Melissa Hogenboom
Edit & Camera: Adam Proctor

#bbcreel #bbc #bbcnews

[aksbeixhev]

As a Norwegian having spent a year in Scotland, never before have I felt more at home. The nature, the culture and people are very similar to what I'm used to back home.

[tessat]

The Vikings came to Normandy and stayed there, too. I also read that in Norse languages, the word "Viking" isn't a noun that describes a person, it is a verb that describes an activity: raiding up a river valley. Norsemen went Viking.

[leapingkitties]

That makes loads of sense. Testing our family DNA shows that there is 7% Norwegian DNA in the mix, where we always believed it was pure Irish and Scottish. It was a surprise and yet kind of not quite. They conquered, stayed, intermarried, and spread out over the country, eventually.

[silkenaria]

My father's entirely Scottish ancestry, so we thought, turned out to be more Norwegian after a DNA test. His family came from Shetland before coming to mainland Scotland. It has been fascinating unraveling the family history.

[jimmyolsenschannel]

My wife and I are both Danish born and bred, lived for 13 years in England and then 17 years in South West Ireland. All the time we have seen our ancestry reflected in the local populations. It's in the eyes for a start, then there are other physical features and then of course the language. In fact, when we first came to Ireland we used to play a game between ourselves called Spot the Viking, looking at magazine covers etc. In County Cork, the singsong accent made us think there were Norwegian tourists everywhere. A Norwegian friend of ours even felt insulted, thinking that the local people she conversed with were making fun of HER English accent.

[b.a.erlebacher]

When the Norse moved to uninhabited lands like the Faeros and Iceland, they were mainly men who stopped to pick up Celtic slaves to do the work for them, and the women to also bear their children. DNA work in both these places show that the present inhabitants descend mainly from Norse men and Celtic women. In conquering a place like Islay, that already had a resident population, I suspect many would have been killed (especially adult men) but most enslaved, with much of the following generation being fathered by the Norse lords. One way that Gaelic could have been so well preserved is that as the language of the women, it would have been the first language of the children, both those fathered by Norse and those fathered by Celts. After a few generations everyone would speak Gaelic, their mother tongue, and only the few who were children of Norse wives would really get to speak Norse comfortably, and since they probably had Gaelic-speaking nursemaids, and were surrounded by Gaelic-speaking serfs and servants, were comfortable in Gaelic as well.

In Iceland and the Faeroes, with no large native Celtic speaking majority, the Norse would have demanded that their slaves spoke Norse to them, so it would have eventually predominated.

Note that in some other areas, in particular some of the West Indies, this process led to people that had a "women's language", that of the conquered (Arawak), and a "men's language", that of the conquerors (Carib). Men could speak both, but only spoke men's language to other men, while women and young children spoke only the women's language. Men enforced this on women, so the languages never merged, nor did one supercede the other, as it did in Islay and elsewhere.

Great video, and I learned how to pronounce Islay!

[jimfrodsham]

I have a German mum from Hamburg and an English father from St Helens in Lancashire so expected to be roughly 50% English-German but instead I'm 83% Scandinavian. My nearest DNA relative apart from my father's kin is a cousin in the US who was from my Oma's sister. She's mostly Scandinavian too. I think the vikings were more settlers than hit and run.

[colinthompson]

About 40 years ago I was on a Norwegian seismic boat surveying some of the island seas. We had local fishermen on board to liaise with local boats around us. I remember our Norwegian crew and the locals found they had lots of common words, especially slang terms, which supports the depiction of their history in the program.

[BoBro]

American here, funny on the surface we we had a huge scottish bloodline. However, when a relative did our genealogy it revealed allot more Norwegian then we excepted. Also, Swedish.

[davidmclean]

This is fascinating! I had my DNA done through MyHeritage and the results were a total surprise to me. My Canadian maritime grandfather was of Scottish heritage. My great great grandparents came over from the inner Hebrides of Scotland. My DNA surprise result was that I have nearly 30% Norse DNA to go along with my Scottish DNA. This makes my family/clan history so much more thought provoking and interesting to me.

[thearab]

Pity they do not seem to have investigated the male and female genetic lines separately. In Orkney, it was shown there was almost 100% replacement of the male line when the Vikings arrived, but far less on the female line (not even a majority). So very few Norwegian women immigrated, and pretty much no aboriginal men were allowed to breed, (whether they were killed, expelled, or enslaved). The fate of first generation aboriginal women may also not have been as kind as "wives" suggests.

I use the term aboriginal because it is unclear if the Orkney population of the day were Celtic or pre-Celtic people. Genetically they could have been descendents of the Skara Brae folk.

[sharonmcwilliams_ionarose]

This is an amazing film. Confirms a few things in my mind about Scottish / Norwegian history. I believe that our cultural history goes back much further and more peacefully than history would lead us to believe.

[Eva-chwz]

I’m from Iceland (female) and I have 70% Norwegian DNA, rest is a mixture of Scottish, Irish, English and Welsh DNA. Always felt drawn to these countries and even though the reason I have this ancestry is not a happy story I’m proud to be connected to them.

[Vikingen]

The scots are our kin to some extend. Much love from Denmark 🙂

[maewest]

I Just realised two things here, which i cannot fathom i have not seen before: The norwegian "nes" or "næss" is a protrution into the ocean/water and hence the same word as in "Loch ness" with the same meaning. - And "loch" is a bit alike the norwegian word "lukke". "Lukke" means "to close". And "loch" is actually "sea that is closed in" aka Water/sea etc. So "Loch Ness" actually means "Water/sea with a/plural ness/Næss in it". "Loch Ness" is actually a norse name!!!

[brontewcat]

Really interesting.

I am surprised the Islanders were surprised to find their Viking roots. Anyone who has visited York knows the Vikings did settle and established roots in Great Britain. It would strange if the only place the Vikings put down roots is in the north of England.

[kevinthorpe]

I'm English (or so I thought).
I done one of those DNA tests.
My "Nana" was Scottish, Sarah Ann Stewart. But my test came back Nordic, Scandinavian.
I'm blue eyed and one of my kids.

I've been learning German for six years and recently decided to learn Norwegian.
I don't know if it's because I've learned a language before but Norwegian is easy and comfortable to learn. Also great fun.
I've also had the pleasure to work with Scandinavian people and they are so polite and easy to get along with.
I'm proud of my ancestry results.
And heritage.

[Pippis]

The mistake in the thinking is that Vikings were always just killing everybody. If there were just fishers and farmers in the island they weren't much of a threat to the vikings. On the contrary they would have gotten fish etc. from the locals. And anyways they weren't always "conquering" or pillaging, they were merchants above all and also settlers trying to find land to farm.

[OzLeedsCrew]

I'm an Aussie with a Scottish born Dad and a Norwegian born mother - as much as I love Australia, I've always felt out of place here. My loyalty to both cultures has resulted in a covering of Norse and Celtic inspired tattoos and a basic grasp of both languages.

[ChristinaHenderson-jf]

I an scots and did a dna test and found im viking too. My step mum and sister are Norwegian as my dad moved to Norway and married a Norwegian woman and now i am Norwegian too. Very proud!