"Ethnic" composition of the Normans before they settled in Sicily

However it's hard to say the precise number of Normans in the South of Italy, David Abulafia wrote around 5.000 while Francesco Renda in his book of Sicily said about 3.000 in Sicily with mostly nobles, knights and soldiers.
Because Normans imported mainlander Italian families for repopulate Sicily not French or Norwegians.
In fact the first national Italian language was born in Sicily and it's not coincidental.

If you mean the initial invading force, then I agree.

But after conquest a large number of settlers moved in.

The Spaniards conquered the whole Mexico with less than 1000 soldiers, but over 700.000 Spanish colonists moved to the New World between the XVI and XVII centuries.

Just one last thing. After the enslavement and expulsion of the 40.000 Muslims of Lucera in Apulia, the remnants of the deported Sicilian Moors, the same area was settled by an equal number of French colonists brought by the Angevins. Still now there is a French speaking minority in the same area.
 
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Valicanus is correct. The original Normans in the south of Europe were mercenaries to help the Lombards fights the Byzantines. Later they took control of Sicily (and Malta as it was part of Sicily at that time) from the fatmids (Muslims). I do not believe that there were any significant migrations from Normandy itself into the South except for the garrisons themselves, who is highly unlikely they would have traveled with family considering the mission they were assigned to. The main stock of Vikings that settled in Northern France were mainly from modern day Denmark.
 
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]IfI rely upon BritainDNA the aDNA of today Sicily overlap completelywith aDNA of South Italy and partially with Greeks and Askhenazes, soa mixture without too visible Germanics aDNA, what does not disprovethe presence of male Y-DNA of diverse Northern origins, as Y-I1 andY-R1b-U106 : as the last settled Normans could be credited ofthe biggest imput, considering the far older occupations by otherNorthern people as Vandals or Longobards would have their heritagegreatly enough erased by time and dispersion before the 1000's;very hard to be sure...[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]whatwould have been interesting is the location in Sicily of theindividuals aDNA spots on the BritainDNA « map », in casethe Western Sicily ones could have shown a (surely limited) drifttowards North populations. (for French people it's evident someindividuals merge with British and Germany borderline people whenother merge with Basques, Spanyards or North Italians)[/FONT]
 
IfI rely upon BritainDNA the aDNA of today Sicily overlap completelywith aDNA of South Italy and partially with Greeks and Askhenazes, soa mixture without too visible Germanics aDNA, what does not disprovethe presence of male Y-DNA of diverse Northern origins, as Y-I1 andY-R1b-U106 : as the last settled Normans could be credited ofthe biggest imput, considering the far older occupations by otherNorthern people as Vandals or Longobards would have their heritagegreatly enough erased by time and dispersion before the 1000's;very hard to be sure...
whatwould have been interesting is the location in Sicily of theindividuals aDNA spots on the BritainDNA « map », in casethe Western Sicily ones could have shown a (surely limited) drifttowards North populations. (for French people it's evident someindividuals merge with British and Germany borderline people whenother merge with Basques, Spanyards or North Italians)

Moesan, does BritainDna have a graph showing that? Is the graph publicly available?

I agree with all of the above, for what it's worth, just adding that some of that, especially the U-106, could have come with the settlement of Sicily from northern Italy in the medieval period.
 
Does someone have maybe a
map with normans and maybe
germans (from time of Staufs)
settlements in southern Italy?
:unsure:
 

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