wow, thanks that was very interesting.
Debbie
Iain Laird wrote:
> >From today's Telegraph
>
> Yours aye
>
> Iain
>
> www.iain-laird.co.uk/ www.sinclairsclub.net
>
> By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent
>
> TWO of Iceland's most famous exports, Magnus Magnusson and Bjork, might
> really be Scottish, a DNA study suggests.
> Genetic profiles of more than 1,600 people have shown that nearly two thirds
> of the women who originally settled Iceland came from Scotland rather than
> Scandinavia. Iceland is thought to have been settled by Vikings in the ninth
> century. It now appears that many of the male Norse settlers brought
> Scottish women with them.
> Researchers, led by Prof Brian Sykes at Oxford University, studied DNA from
> volunteers from Scandinavia, Orkney, the Western Isles and the Isle of Skye.
> They examined mitochondrial DNA, a genetic code passed from mothers to their
> children.
> Studying similarities in the DNA allows scientists to put together ancient
> family trees. Prof Sykes said: "The results showed that more than 60 per
> cent of the women who were among the original settlers of Iceland came not
> from Scandinavia but from Scotland."
> Previous genetic tests have found that only 20 per cent of the original male
> Icelandic settlers were Scottish. The study, published in the American
> Journal of Human Genetics, found that Viking women made up 35 per cent of
> the female ancestors of the inhabitants of Orkney and 12 per cent of female
> ancestors of people living in the Western Isles and the Isle of Skye.
> Vikings from western Norway dominated the North Atlantic from the 8th to the
> 11th centuries. They arrived in Shetland and Orkney from around AD 780 and
> spread around the Scottish coastline to the Western Isles.
> At first they raided monasteries and farms but later settled, sometimes
> bringing their families from Norway and sometimes marrying local women.
> Iceland was settled around AD 860.
> The study suggests that Iceland was settled by Vikings who had previously
> lived in Scotland with local wives, or that Icelandic Vikings raided
> Scotland and took women and girls back with them.
>
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