Ancient DNA Reveals A Genetic History of the Viking Age: Smithsonian. Slavery in Viking Society

Last edited Thu Jan 12, 2023, 06:08 PM - Edit history (1)

- 'Ancient DNA Reveals a Genetic History of the Viking Age,' Smithsonian Magazine, Jan. 10, 2023. Ed.

- Nearly 300 ancient genomes shed light on how people migrated and genes flowed in Scandinavia -

During the Viking Age, from 750 to 1050 C.E., Scandinavians were on the move. The seafaring Vikings were the first people to reach 4 different continents, visiting Europe, Asia, Africa & North America. As they did, they exchanged goods, technology and culture—as well as genes. In a study published last week in the journal Cell, scientists examined nearly 300 ancient human genomes from Scandinavia that span a 2,000-year period, painting a picture of the region’s genetic history. They looked at 48 new and 249 previously published ancient genomes and compared them to 16,638 genomes from modern humans.

New evidence from several archaeological sites, including the wreck of the Swedish warship Kronan, helped reveal how the prevalence of genes from 3 regions—the British & Irish Isles, the eastern Baltic and Southern Europe—varied across time and space. “I do not think there is any other study digging this deep into Scandinavia,” Anders Götherström, a study co-author & molecular archaeologist at Stockholm University’s Center for Paleogenetics, tells Gizmodo’s Isaac Schultz. British & Irish ancestry was present across Scandinavia at the time, while eastern Baltic ancestry was contained in central Sweden & Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. Southern European ancestry appeared in remains from southern Scandinavia.

The study “confirms that the Viking Age—besides representing the past expansion of Scandinavians to other regions within Europe—also enabled the first arrival of diverse foreign genomic ancestries into the Scandinavian Peninsula,” Andre Luiz Campelo dos Santos, an archaeologist at Fla. Atlantic Univ. who did not contribute to the study, tells Gizmodo in an email. Migrations varied by region: People who came to Scandinavia from the British and Irish Isles might have been high-ranking Christian missionaries or monks, or they might have been enslaved people Vikings transported against their will.

From some regions, the influx appeared to be sex-based and mainly made up of women.

Female arrivals from the east Baltic and, to a lesser degree, the British & Irish Isles drove the impact of these areas on the genetic makeup of Viking-age Scandinavia. “We have no way to know with our data the number of women involved or if these women with east Baltic & British-Irish ancestries were in Scandinavia voluntarily or involuntarily,” said Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela, the study’s first author. The researchers also found that some of the ancestries that appeared during the Viking Age are less prevalent than they are today, writes Popular Science’s Laura Baisas. “Although still evident in modern Scandinavians, levels of non-local ancestry in some regions are lower than those observed in ancient individuals from the Viking to Medieval periods,”... Read More, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-dna-reveals-a-genetic-history-of-the-viking-age-180981404/
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- Also: * The Little-Known Role of Slavery in Viking Society, Smithsonian, Aug. 25, 2020. A new book looks at the legendary Scandinavians through their own eyes. Excerpts, Ed.

One of the most enduring components of the Viking image is the notion of freedom—the adventure of a far horizon & all that went with it. But for many, this was an unattainable hope. Any true reading of life in the Viking Age first has to come to terms with an aspect of everyday experience that probably represented the most elemental division in societies at the time: the difference between those who were free & those who were not. Beneath the social network, any other distinction of status, class, opportunity & wealth pales beside the most basic fact of liberty & the consequent potential for choice.

The institution of slavery had long antecedents in Scandinavia, probably going back thousands of years before the time of the Vikings. By the 8th century A.D., a considerable population of unfree people lived in the North, their condition largely a hereditary one built up over generations.

In the Viking Age, this picture changed dramatically because, for the first time, Scandinavians began to make the active acquisition of human chattel a key part of their economy. This was one of the primary objectives of Viking raids & military campaigns—and the result was a massive increase in the numbers of enslaved people in Scandinavia. Let it therefore be clearly stated: The Vikings were slavers, and the kidnapping, sale & forced exploitation of human beings was always a central pillar of their culture. One reason why this reality has made so little public impact is that the conventional vocabularies of enslavement—as employed by academics & others working on, for example, the transatlantic trade of more recent centuries—have rarely been applied to the Viking Age.

In particular, there is ambiguity in the terminology because a very different word has always been used in place of “slave”: the Old Norse thræll—giving us the modern English “thrall,” which we now use as in being enthralled by a person, a work of art or an idea. A judicious combination of archaeological & textual sources can produce a relatively comprehensive picture of Viking slaveholding. One intermediate state of servitude, for instance, was voluntary up to a point, albeit entered into under considerable economic compulsion, such as a means of clearing debts. Certain crimes were also punishable by serving as a thrall for a fixed period of time. The Norse system of thralldom was not always complete chattel slavery, but most of the enslaved had little agency.

As 2 prominent Viking scholars observed 50 years ago, “The slave could own nothing, inherit nothing, leave nothing.”

They were not paid, of course, but in some circumstances, they were allowed to retain a small portion of the proceeds they obtained at market when selling goods for their owners. As a result, it was technically possible, though rare, for a thrall to purchase his or her freedom. They could also be manumitted, or released from slavery, at any time. Based on these parameters, some scholars have argued that the number of actual enslaved people in Viking Age society was relatively low. But as researchers conduct additional analysis of detailed European records of Viking slave-taking raids, the scale of this trade has been revised sharply upward. - Slave Shackles.. For the enslaved, the mid-8th to mid-11th cent. A.D. were an utterly different experience from that of the free people around them. The Viking Age was very much a time of borders—between cultures & ways of life, between different views of reality, & between individuals, including at the level of liberty itself... Read More, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/little-known-role-slavery-viking-society-180975597/