Photo: Robert Harding Picture Library, Alamy
Interesting new evidence that the Vikings and the North American natives, who the Vikings called skrælings may have gotten along a bit better than suggested by the sagas. DNA testing of 80 living Icelanders shows indicates a genetic variation similar to one found mostly in Native Americans.
American Indian Sailed to Europe With Vikings?
Five hundred years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, a Native American woman may have voyaged to Europe with Vikings, according to a provocative new DNA study.
The idea that a Native American woman sailed from North America to Iceland during that period of settlement and exploration provides the best explanation for the Icelanders’ variant, the research team says.
“We know that Vikings sailed to the Americas,” said Agnar Helgason of deCODE Genetics and the University of Iceland, who co-wrote the study with his student Sigrídur Ebenesersdóttir and colleagues. “So all you have to do is assume … that they met some people and ended up taking at least one female back with them.
“Although it’s maybe interesting and surprising, it’s not all that incredible,” Helgason added. “The alternative explanations to me are less likely”—for example the idea that the genetic trait might exist independently, undiscovered, in a few Europeans.
Hard to imagine this could really be right. The sagas are unanimous about the conflict between Viking and “Skraeling”, plus to exist in a statistically significant sample of modern Icelanders, the DNA would have to be represented by more than just one or two children of the putative Indian maiden.
The Vikings occupied Greenland for much longer than they stayed in Vinland (Newfoundland), but the article says that this DNA feature is completely absent from Eskimo/Inuit people who live in Greenland today, so it can’t have resulted over a period of time and multiple intermarriages.
As the linked article says, a mystery — but I’ve seen DNA data elsewhere that didn’t make much sense either.
My grandmother was 100% Blackfeet tribe, but trying to prove that to the IRS is a different story!