SCI Vikings Introduce Native American DNA To Iceland

Melodi

Melodi

Disaster Cat
I've mentioned this a few times in the past and here's an MSM article about the topic - there is also a link to the original scientific paper that published the data on the Native American DNA from a "Founding Mother" of Iceland.
www.historicmysteries.com

Vikings Introduce Native American DNA To Iceland - Historic Mysteries

There was contact between the Icelandic Vikings and the Native Americans which led to Native American DNA being brought back to Iceland.
www.historicmysteries.com www.historicmysteries.com
Vikings Introduce Native American DNA To Iceland
by Didi
0
A new study suggests that some Icelanders may be direct descendants of a Native American woman. If this is true, then the Vikings in fact had substantive contact with Native Americans, an unestablished hypothesis until now, and were the first people to bring a Native American to Europe.
Somehow Native American DNA arrived in Iceland.
Somehow Native American DNA made its way into the Iceland gene pool – possibly centuries ago. Image: Pinterest
A Homogenous Icelandic Gene Pool
The Vikings settled Iceland in the 9th century, and it is now a country of a little fewer than 300,000 people. Since that time, the Icelandic gene pool has remained largely homogenous as a result of long-term isolation. That, combined with Iceland’s meticulous record-keeping of its people’s genealogy, makes studying and verifying Icelanders’ genetic make-up an alluring draw to researchers interested in genetic studies.
DNA Sequence C1e Lineage
One such researcher recently published a study in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, analyzing the DNA of Icelanders to determine that “a mysterious . . . . DNA sequence (that we name the C1e lineage). . . , carried by more than 80 Icelanders, can be traced through the female line to four ancestors born in Iceland around 1700. There is good reason to believe that the C1e lineage arrived in Iceland several hundreds of years before 1700.”
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The C1e lineage can be found in both Native Americans and East Asian populations. However, it is more than likely that the C1e lineage found in Icelanders is linked to Native Americans and that this link was created as far back as the year 1000 A.D. when the Vikings settled in Newfoundland.
The Study
Around the year 1000 A.D., five hundred years before Christopher Columbus is said to have discovered America, Vikings had in fact discovered and tried to colonize the continent. Remains of buildings from this period, with evidence of temporary occupation by Vikings, have been found at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. However, there is no direct evidence of contact between the Vikings and Native Americans – i.e. that they actually met. Our findings raise the possibility that there was in fact contact between the Icelandic Vikings and the Native Americans which led to a Native American woman carrying the C1e lineage . . . being brought to Iceland. If this is the case, then the contemporary Icelanders carrying the C1e lineage would be descended through the direct female line from the first Native American to travel to Europe.
C1E STUDY
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Norse statues installed above L’Anse aux Meadows historical site, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Norse statues installed above L’Anse aux Meadows historical site, Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Vikings apparently stayed in Newfoundland for three to ten years. If the Icelanders in the study can be traced to a Native American woman, then several additional questions arise that the study does not pose. For example, did any of the Vikings remain in North America after the settlers left Newfoundland? Did the Vikings settle anywhere else in North America? And if so, did they stay for a longer period of time?
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Many researchers believe that the Vikings established settlements along the eastern shores of North America and as far north as the Canadian Arctic. If that is the case, a more prevalent link between the Vikings and Native Americans may exist.

Sources:
Sigríður Sunna Ebenersdóttir et al. “A New Subclade of mtDNA Haplogroup C1 Found in Icelanders: Evidence of Pre-Columbian Contact?”, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Wiley-Blackwell, November 2010
 
ShadowMan

ShadowMan

Designated Grumpy Old Fart
Very interesting and I'm sure VERY TRUE. You know how SAILORS are on liberty......a girl in every port! Though seriously, I have no doubt that contact was made between the two groups and girls being girls and sailors being sailors, love happens.

If I remember correctly the RNA of mitochondria (power house of the cells) is passed down through the mother to her children. I wonder if they have done any female mitochondria studies of potential Native Tribes in the Northeastern US and Iceland. Might be able to find out just how far south the Vikings actually traveled based on those findings.

Great article Melodi!! You always come up with very interesting topics and thought provoking articles...THANKS!
 
T

Troke

On TB every waking moment
Hmm! I had always been led to believe that the Vikings found the North American Indigenous Peoples (as they are called now) to be implacably hostile so the Vikings soon left. Maybe the reason was the Vikings were running around kidnapping Indigenous People maidens thus creating a local maiden shortage?.
 
Melodi

Melodi

Disaster Cat
It has been known for several years that one of the "Founding Mothers" of Iceland was a Native American woman, non-Inuit, and probably from the East Coast of North America.

I couldn't tell from this summary if this article is about a new study that confirms/clarifies the findings of the first one or if it is just a cool reporting of the original story.

Either way, I was really happy to have a good "easy-read" version and the link to the published paper.
 
Melodi

Melodi

Disaster Cat
Troke said:
Hmm! I had always been led to believe that the Vikings found the North American Indigenous Peoples (as they are called now) to be implacably hostile so the Vikings soon left. Maybe the reason was the Vikings were running around kidnapping Indigenous People maidens thus creating a local maiden shortage?.
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The Sagas say that Lief the Lucky's original colony was there for probably around ten years before things got hostile and his colony was forced to flee the area.

They also say that Lief's crazy sister Freydis (a chip off the old block like her Dad Eric the Red, exiled from both Norway and Iceland during his lifetime) anyway the Sagas say Freydis stopped the colonists from being massacred by the Natives by pulling up her dress, showing her pregnancy and hitting her stomach with the blunt side of a sword.

Obviously, Freydis knew of some local tradition that prohibited an attack upon a pregnant woman or some local legend connected with them, but sadly the Saga does not explain why she did this or why it worked.

Nightwolf also told me there was another bit in one of the sagas where a few years later, another expedition asked Liefer's permission to use/rent his houses in Vinland - and no I don't have the reference and for all I know, it was something Nightwolf did his own translations on.

But he said this suggested there was more than one direct attempt to occupy Leif's original farm/colony in Vinland and there are other hints in the sagas of continued trade and some contacts at least between the Greenlanders and the Northernmost Native Americans.

That said, having a founding Mother of ICELAND be a Native American woman, suggests that someone went to Vineland and brought a native bride (or less likely slave, but I suspect bride) not just back to Greenland but on to Iceland, which was already considered a part of Europe at the time.
 
packyderms_wife

packyderms_wife

Neither here nor there.
Troke said:
Hmm! I had always been led to believe that the Vikings found the North American Indigenous Peoples (as they are called now) to be implacably hostile so the Vikings soon left. Maybe the reason was the Vikings were running around kidnapping Indigenous People maidens thus creating a local maiden shortage?.
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Nope, the Mi'kmaq and the Beothuk are/were incredibly friendly and welcoming of outsiders. Adopting orphaned children into the family is also very common now and as well as centuries ago.
 
packyderms_wife

packyderms_wife

Neither here nor there.
Melodi said:
The Sagas say that Lief the Lucky's original colony was there for probably around ten years before things got hostile and his colony was forced to flee the area.

They also say that Lief's crazy sister Freydis (a chip off the old block like her Dad Eric the Red, exiled from both Norway and Iceland during his lifetime) anyway the Sagas say Freydis stopped the colonists from being massacred by the Natives by pulling up her dress, showing her pregnancy and hitting her stomach with the blunt side of a sword.

Obviously, Freydis knew of some local tradition that prohibited an attack upon a pregnant woman or some local legend connected with them, but sadly the Saga does not explain why she did this or why it worked.

Nightwolf also told me there was another bit in one of the sagas where a few years later, another expedition asked Liefer's permission to use/rent his houses in Vinland - and no I don't have the reference and for all I know, it was something Nightwolf did his own translations on.

But he said this suggested there was more than one direct attempt to occupy Leif's original farm/colony in Vinland and there are other hints in the sagas of continued trade and some contacts at least between the Greenlanders and the Northernmost Native Americans.

That said, having a founding Mother of ICELAND be a Native American woman, suggests that someone went to Vineland and brought a native bride (or less likely slave, but I suspect bride) not just back to Greenland but on to Iceland, which was already considered a part of Europe at the time.
Click to expand...

And then there's my peoples version of the story, however I'm not going to go into it here.
 
Melodi

Melodi

Disaster Cat
packyderms_wife said:
And then there's my peoples version of the story, however I'm not going to go into it here.
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But I hope you will tell me some time - I told Nightwolf nearly 30 years ago when we were researching this at the Cambridge (UK) library that I suspected there probably were still stories among the Mi'kmaq with their version of how things went, but you'd probably have to ask very-very nicely for them to tell you anything.

Now he didn't get a chance to ask, but when Nightwolf went to Newfoundland to hunt "his" bear for his 30th birthday, by chance afterward he ended up going to a Native American gathering that was open to the public. He had a Canadian friend who had been invited and took him as a guest.

Nightwolf was busy making a rune set out of one of the bones from the bear he had hunted and when the local chief heard about it, he offered Nightwolf the use of his tent/dwelling during the day as he recognized what Nightwolf was doing and that it was basically "Norse Medicine."

Nightwolf was absolutely in awe as he had not asked for this but he accepted the offer and carved his rune set during that gathering. I am pretty sure it was Mi'kmaq, which again suggested to me there was a very old connection there of somesort.
 
Melodi

Melodi

Disaster Cat
While the Icelandic Sagas are not perfect (we know that now from the DNA alone as in 1/2 of it is Irish on the maternal line), a big difference between the Icelandic Sagas and those of many other tribes and nations is that they were at least partly written down pretty early, and then codified about 200 years later.

We also know from excavations in Noovgrood Russia, that the Norse were a highly literate people before the conversion period and the move from writing in runes to writing in Latin. Thousands of birchbark letters and notes have been found in the Russian mud, so many that may take 100 years to translate them.

The real shocker was finding out that around 1,000 AD, the average Norseman or woman was highly literate, and the writing is every from grocery lists and love poetry, to my favorite:

A letter from a wife to her husband away on a trading expedition that included a drawing of a stick figure obviously done by a child with childish handwriting "Daddy" on it in runes.

While it is said that "Daddy" may never have seen this drawing, we people of the future have been blessed to see it because it got dropped somewhere in the mud along the way.

That said, not everything written today is true and people in the Viking era were perfectly capable of writing fiction and/or their own "tell-all" version of their great adventure in ways that put a really good "spin" on things (even getting run out of town by the locals with your tail between your legs back to Greenland from Vinland).
 
ShadowMan

ShadowMan

Designated Grumpy Old Fart
Considering how people today are able to move about the world in a simple manner, walking, boating etc., I have no doubt people being curious as people are that there is absolutely no reason to think that there wasn't A LOT of traveling and interaction between peoples and cultures thousands of years ago.

Yes there was a lot of empty space to cover when compared to today but there are always the adventurous types that have to see what is beyond the next rise or mountain. It's simple human nature.
 
PghPanther

PghPanther

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Indigenous humans to a particular place is all relative anyway......

.....I figure its yours as long as you can hold on to it as a nation, city-state, tribe whatever..............

Hell the apes were indigenous to all places now occupied by humans a few million years ago...........I don't see any social movements or TV shows/ads about giving them their land back.............
 
Melodi

Melodi

Disaster Cat
Chapulin said:
We seem to shy away from the concept of slave/sexual partner that seems to be suggested in so many of these stories/research.
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It is totally possible (as one friend not on the forum mentioned) that she was either abducted or perhaps bought from her father for an iron ax (we know Leif had a forge, the remnants have been found in Canada).

However, in whatever manner she was taken, because this DNA is maternal and she is a founding Mother of Iceland - one friend in Iceland posted on Facebook today that something like 1/3 of the Islanders tested so far have her Native American DNA; she was cared for well enough as was her child to be the ancestor of thousands of people.

Iceland was not an easy place to live in the early days and the fact that she was taken not just back to Greenland but onto Iceland to me suggests that even if she was a Thrall (slave) her master was fond of her.

Add to that, that the Norse during this period had a strong tradition of freeing their female slaves when/if they gave birth to their master; usually, they were then elevated to the status of wife or legal concubine/secondary wife. Which allowed her children to inherit along with those of any existing formal marriage.
 
D

Dozdoats

On TB every waking moment
Hey, she not only lived, she 'mothered' a whole country. Given a do-over, wonder what she would say??
 
PghPanther

PghPanther

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Dozdoats said:
Search "re-wilding."
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yup I'm sure that along with movements like "voluntary human extinction" are around but they are not as mainstream as all the moaning like "Make America native again" and hand over assets like with BLM that is being pushed.........
 
ShadowMan

ShadowMan

Designated Grumpy Old Fart
Dozdoats said:
Bison: Bring Them Back (nwf.org)

Of course, a couple of rich globalists might object ...
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And that meat would be a lot better for us than all this hormone, antibiotic, feed lot raised cattle. If you haven't ever had Bison I totally suggest you should. I'd buy that meat in a heart beat if there were any being raised locally. The little bit I've seen in supermarkets is more than a bit pricey.
 
D

Dozdoats

On TB every waking moment
They reasserted themselves and landed right on our faces.

Love those tilty eyes :D

ETA - there are childhood photos of her online that show how pronounced her epicanthic folds are. She was a cute kid, too.
 
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SpokaneMan

SpokaneMan

Veteran Member
I love my Scot and Norwegian blood. That makes me a modern day... , well... , don't furk with us kind of people.

My ancestor is the Westford Knight. From Clan Gunn. Hint: Westford, Massachusetts. We don't mind putting the hurt on those that deserve it. It's a DNA thing. It's not a threat, Clan Gunn was the military for the other 3 original Clans in the Highlands. I don't even know why I am telling you this.

ETA: I should have also mentioned that Sir Gunn was knighted by the King of Scotland in the 1300's . Oh yeah, one other thing is that he was Knights' Templar.
 
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N

northern watch

TB Fanatic
What Did Vikings Really Look Like? New DNA Study Reveals Most Weren't Blond or Blue-Eyed
Turns out they didn't much resemble Thor or Ragnar Lothbrok.

By Jim Vejvoda
IGN
Updated: 21 Sep 2020 5:20 pm
Posted: 21 Sep 2020 5:05 pm

It turns out most Vikings weren't as fair-haired and blue-eyed as legend and pop culture have led people to believe. According to a new study on the DNA of over 400 Viking remains, most Vikings had dark hair and dark eyes. (Sorry, Chris Hemsworth and Travis Fimmel.)

Nature's study sequencing the genomes of 442 Viking remains from Viking-inhabited areas like northern Europe, Italy, and Greenland -- human remains dated between 2400 B.C. to 1600 A.D. and which were buried with a variety of Viking artifacts -- reveals far more genetic diversity than previously thought about the people who came from the land of the ice and snow. The Vikings, after all, were a scattered group whose sea-faring for trade, exploration, and conquest saw them settle far and wide during the Viking Age that lasted from roughly 700 A.D. to 1100 A.D.

Not only did many of the studied Vikings turn out to not be blond or blue-eyed, their genetic admixture shows they weren't a distinct ethnic group but rather a mix of various other groups, "with ancestry from hunter-gatherers, farmers, and populations from the Eurasian steppe."

The study revealed which Scandinavian countries influenced outside regions the most. "The Danish Vikings went to England, while the Swedish Vikings went to the Baltic and the Norwegian Vikings went to Ireland, Iceland, and Greenland," according to the University of Copenhagen's Ashot Margaryan. Three particularly genetically diverse areas -- one in modern Denmark, and one apiece on the Swedish islands of Gotland and Öland -- were likely key trading centers.

The conclusions of this genetic analysis suggest the very idea of being a Viking was likely more a way of life or job. As Science Alert puts it:

"(The) results also reveal that during the Viking Age, being a Viking was as much a concept and a culture as it was question of genetic inheritance, with the team finding that two Viking skeletons buried in the Northern Isles of Scotland had what looks to be relatively pure Scottish and Irish heritage, with no Scandinavian influence, at least not genetically speaking, that is."

“These identities aren’t genetic or ethnic, they’re social,” archaeologist Cat Jarman informed Science magazine. “To have backup for that from DNA is powerful.”

And as Science magazine also highlights, "several individuals in Norway were buried as Vikings, but their genes identified them as Saami, an Indigenous group genetically closer to East Asians and Siberiansthan to Europeans."

Fascinatingly, the DNA study also revealed that two of the remains found hundreds of miles apart -- one in the U.K. and one in Denmark -- turned out to be a pair of cousins.

What Did Vikings Really Look Like? New DNA Study Reveals Most Weren't Blond or Blue-Eyed - IGN
 
N

northern watch

TB Fanatic
SpokaneMan said:
I love my Scot and Norwegian blood. That makes me a modern day... , well... , don't furk with us kind of people.

My ancestor is the Westford Knight. From Clan Gunn. Hint: Westford, Massachusetts. We don't mind putting the hurt on those that deserve it. It's a DNA thing. It's not a threat, Clan Gunn was the military for the other 3 original Clans in the Highlands. I don't even know why I am telling you this.

ETA: I should have also mentioned that Sir Gunn was knighted by the King of Scotland in the 1300's . Oh yeah, one other thing is that he was Knights' Templar.
Click to expand...

Interesting, Do you know which other 3 Clans you are descended from?
 
ShadowMan

ShadowMan

Designated Grumpy Old Fart
Highlander's here from Clan MacNeacaeil and Clan MacKay.....and unfortunately 1/4 English (Lee's) from my mother's side. But we don't talk about those black sheep. :rofl:According to our DNA a significant amount of Norwegian, aka Viking blood runs through our veins. Could explain our short tempers.
 
N

northern watch

TB Fanatic
ShadowMan said:
Highlander's here from Clan MacNeacaeil and Clan MacKay.....and unfortunately 1/4 English (Lee's) from my mother's side. But we don't talk about those black sheep. :rofl:According to our DNA a significant amount of Norwegian, aka Viking blood runs through our veins. Could explain our short tempers.
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When you compare post 36 with 38, you can see that the area of Clan MacKay is Viking territory.

Clan MacNeacail, sometimes known as Clan MacNicol, is a Scottish clan long associated with the Isle of Skye. Tradition states that, early in its history, the clan held the Isle of Lewis, as well as extensive territory on the north-western mainland.

I would think that Clan MacNeacail is another example of a clam coming from Viking territory
 
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