Dark hair was common among Vikings, genetic study confirms

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I completely agree. It's getting rather tiresome with all the politicization, which cannot be denied at this point. Some of the claims made by the media regarding this study have been outright bizarre and should rightly be scrutinized. The strawman made in the press and from some of the scientists about the supposed "uniformly blonde, blue-eyed, tall group of Nordic warriors" is completely ridiculous. People seriously exaggerate how widespread such ideas are in the modern world, aside from some fringe-circles on the Internet. Nobody with a functioning intellect who set their foot in a Northern European country ever believed such a thing, not even the Nazi-ideologues of the 30's. But instead of striving for some objectivity, the media seems to have gone off completely on the opposite end. The worst of the offenders will now have you believe that blonde hair hardly existed in Scandinavia during the VA, which is completely silly and seriously misleading. Having said that, I'll hold off on commenting more on phenotype until I have seen pigmentation-data on the individual samples in detail.



And when you try to set the record straight people accuse you of being a butthurted Nordicist who cries over swarthy looking Vikings. What some people fail to understand is the fact that when the researchers in that paper speak of natural selection they're referring to the last 4,000 years. Viking pigmentation allele frequencies are same as their modern Danish sample set. So there is a genetic continuity in Scandinavia that is being clouded, even obfuscated and twisted to the contrary. We live in times where everything has to fit the diversity and multiculturalism narrative. So it isn't surprising that the media won't report the fact that the original Vikings and modern Danes, Scandinavians are basically the same people. Hence, the truth is much closer to what ancient Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, medieval Europeans have known for centuries about Vikings. Therefore, I always tell people to read genetic studies with caution and not to blindly dismiss historical sources and eyewitness accounts with the notion GENES don't lie. Genes don't lie but people can and do mislead when using questionable methods. To be continued it's really late and I have to log out now.

@Angela I'll post the names of the blond Italians domani.

 
Maybe most vikings
Looked like dolph lundgren ( the closest thing to the nazi ideal when ironically the nazi leaders except haydrich had dark hair and dark eyes go figure....:rolleyes:
 
Not much you can do here. Everyone is entitled to opinions.

Abate to me looks Italian, despite the pigmentation. Profile pictures are better in general to properly evaluate bone structure, nose, forehead, hairline etc.

@real expert

Since you said Abate is blonde because of some ancient German genetic input in Napoli (South Italy)... Do you think Baltic, Slav, Turkish etc blonde people got this trait cause of Germans?
I mean, in what world are genes exclusive to one population? Light pigmentation is older than Germans as a people, or even proto-Germans for that matter...
But lets say they are exclusive to Germans or Nordics. How did they get there in the first place, and how did they become exclusive. Did any intermediate population transmitting those genes just disappear, and any other populations having received that input just die out, leaving the genes 2k years ago in Germans only? Is that your take?

PS: Search Bekim Balaj and Jurgen Uldedaj... do they look German to you?


@ Angela I completely agree with you. I think people not from the region, have a hard time classifying Southern/Europeans. They look at minor tells like eye color or hair color and disregard all the rest of the phenotype tells. Its a bias similar to Europeans not being able to classify Asians or Africans into separate ethnicities, when Asians or Africans might do a better job, and vice versa.
 
Most northern Italians absolutely don’t look like that. Also, please provide verification for the name and ethnicity of each person except the redhead.


It seems they have already been posted in forums in the past. They are all Italian, majority from northern Italy and one (or two) from central Italy. I don't think that all their ancestry is known. Anyway such types exist but they certainly do not represent the majority of the population and are not common.
 
Maybe most vikings
Looked like dolph lundgren ( the closest thing to the nazi ideal when ironically the nazi leaders except haydrich had dark hair and dark eyes go figure....:rolleyes:
Please, not this shit again.
I think it's time we stop bringing up Nazis and Nazi ideology in discussing the results from this study. It really has no relevance to the topic at hand, and quite frankly it comes off exceedingly childish and banal when brought up without any good reason for doing so. Keep in mind, this site has entire sub-forums dedicated to discussing phenotypes and pigmentation, so I expect most people here would be mature enough to discuss these topics without derailing it into ideology and politicized nonsense.
 
Please, not this shit again.
I think it's time we stop bringing up Nazis and Nazi ideology in discussing the results from this study. It really has no relevance to the topic at hand, and quite frankly it comes off exceedingly childish and banal when brought up without any good reason for doing so. Keep in mind, this site has entire sub-forums dedicated to discussing phenotypes and pigmentation, so I expect most people here would be mature enough to discuss these topics without derailing it into ideology and politicized nonsense.


ok ........:unsure:
here is a person who in my opinion can play a viking ( and he did in the movie the 13th Warrior )
vladimir kulich
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0474520/mediaviewer/rm2325517569?ref_=nm_ov_ph
he is
height 1.96 (damn tall)
hair: blond
eyes: blue
i think even among the ancient slavs existed some nordic people ( doesn't always need to be brought by germanic invaders)
among the vikings in the paper how much were slavic polish like autosomally speaking ?
in the viking paper from what i saw vk139 from denmark 96% polish like and vk474 from gotland 98% polish like are the ones with the heighest
polish like admixture
how did they looked ?
 
Things seem like they are not what they seem in most cases. When I was two weeks in Berlin I really hoped to have found the most homogeneous natives but I found a lot of morphological variety and it had nothing to do with what I had imagined from the e.t.c. cinema. And already in the museums that had groups from other parts of Germany I still saw even more diversity. I could count on the fingers of one hand the topical prototypes that the cinema had shown me, well in films where German characters from the Nazi era or any other time appeared because obviously in the cinema there is a casting in real life, not and yet the cinema has more power to perpetuate clichés or clichés. I saw the North Africans much more homogeneous, for example. So when it comes to the Vikings we can be very influenced by the cinema and it probably doesn't reflect reality.
 
And when you try to set the record straight people accuse you of being a butthurted Nordicist who cries over swarthy looking Vikings. What some people fail to understand is the fact that when the researchers in that paper speak of natural selection they're referring to the last 4,000 years. Viking pigmentation allele frequencies are same as their modern Danish sample set. So there is a genetic continuity in Scandinavia that is being clouded, even obfuscated and twisted to the contrary. We live in times where everything has to fit the diversity and multiculturalism narrative. So it isn't surprising that the media won't report the fact that the original Vikings and modern Danes, Scandinavians are basically the same people. Hence, the truth is much closer to what ancient Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, medieval Europeans have known for centuries about Vikings. Therefore, I always tell people to read genetic studies with caution and not to blindly dismiss historical sources and eyewitness accounts with the notion GENES don't lie. Genes don't lie but people can and do mislead when using questionable methods. To be continued it's really late and I have to log out now.

@Angela I'll post the names of the blond Italians domani.


I don't really know what the researcher did when they publish it....was it to make a PR stunt?

But everyone can read what Maciamo has quoted from their own study:
Here is what the study says regarding the skin, hair and eye pigmentation of the Vikings. It's almost identical to modern Danes.


"The SNPs with strongest association with lighter hair and eye pigmentation phenotypes such as theones in HERC2, OCA2, and TYR genes in humans are elevated in the Viking population, and theprofile of allele frequency distribution is close to the present-day northern European populationrepresented here by the 'CEU' (1000 Genomes Project) and the modern Danish population ('DK')from IPSYCH case-cohort study. The frequencies of informative SNPs associated with pigmentationare presented in Figure S13.1. This suggests that the genetic profile of pigmentation SNPs we observein northern Europeans today had been largely formed at the onset of the Viking period."

According to these charts, the main difference between the Vikings tested and modern Danes is that the Vikings had twice the frequency of derived OCA2 (rs1800407), one of the mutation associated with blue eyes. That doesn't mean much as modern Tuscans have an even higher frequency of derived OCA2.

So it's on the contrary the Vikings had lighter eyes than nowadays Danish...so kind of :banghead:

By the way I have the allels for blue eyes rs1800407 GG but I have chestnut brown eyes;) But that are the exceptions I guess....
 
Even according to this Viking study fully Scando-Vikings have the same pigmentation as modern Danes. Let‘s take a look at the Danish national- football team and the phenotype of the ethnic Danes.



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It seems funny that so many people subscribe to Nazi corruptions of Nitzchean ubermensch...
Do not get me wrong, right now Scandinavian culture is apex in my book. But that has to do with the marketplace of ideas rather than genes.
But what does pigmentation have to do with ubermensch? Eye color and hair color have more to do with sexual selection than natural selection...

Other than that, what did these Vikings even contribute to human advancement?
Muh alphas raiding betas... As if Mongols or Berbers weren't even more known for raids/piracy. Guess they were tall, blonde, light eyed alphas as well xD

PS: To all the posters claiming anyone with dark hair were mud-blood mixed south Europeans, you make me sick. As if having dark hair is mutually exclusive with being a "Viking".


According to the researchers that is exactly the case. They attribute the brown hair found among the Vikings definitely to Southern Europeans(Italian-like people) joining or mixing with the Vikings. So again don‘t get mad and angry at me but at the researchers. I didn't write the study nor the articles in daily mail, NG or the Guardian. In addition to that, there was another DNA research on Viking phenotype which found out that the Danish Vikings were rather red-haired while the Norwegian Vikings were blond. Hence, there was already a study that indicated that not ALL Vikings were blond.

Besides,I ask you politely to refrain from bringing up Nazi-accusation when discussing the Viking or Germanic phenotype. It‘s getting disgusting now.

You can debate or disagree with me, no problem, but keep it civil and respectful. So stop with these BS Nazi analogies. Plus I‘m not a Nordicist, so you're a preaching to the wrong person.
 
Things seem like they are not what they seem in most cases. When I was two weeks in Berlin I really hoped to have found the most homogeneous natives but I found a lot of morphological variety and it had nothing to do with what I had imagined from the e.t.c. cinema. And already in the museums that had groups from other parts of Germany I still saw even more diversity. I could count on the fingers of one hand the topical prototypes that the cinema had shown me, well in films where German characters from the Nazi era or any other time appeared because obviously in the cinema there is a casting in real life, not and yet the cinema has more power to perpetuate clichés or clichés. I saw the North Africans much more homogeneous, for example. So when it comes to the Vikings we can be very influenced by the cinema and it probably doesn't reflect reality.


It's rather that things are not as they used to be. There is such a thing as demographic change.


Berlin is the most multicultural, the most diverse place in Germany where the native Germans are a minority, to begin with. Germany today isn't like 20 years ago, let alone 50 years ago. Don't forget Germany has 21 million migrants. Furthermore, countless native Germans are mixing with all kinds of migrants and having kids with them for 30 years now. Besides, not all who you think are native Germans are ethnically speaking Germans. Bear in mind, that there are millions of Germans who are basically descendants of assimilated, Germanized Eastern or Southern-Eastern Europeans that live as German locals now. After WWII Germany received millions of refugees from the Eastern Prussian provinces too. Hence, not all white Germans are native Germans. The same goes for Austria, there are plenty Austrians who are Croats, Hungarians by their origin. Anyway, ethnic Germans look very, very similar to Danes even Swedes, especially Northern Germans. And they usually do look like the stereotype. With that being said, today even remote and tiny German villages are pretty diverse due to migrations. So Germany today is not the same as it used to be. The future Germans will be very swarthy and even more diverse.

It's not cinema alone but ancient, medieval sources, and European people from WW II who encountered German soldiers that created the stereotype of tall and blond Germans. That will change in the future since again Germans are dating or marrying very much outside their group.

Anyway, there were plenty Vikings who looked like in the cinema but not all did. That's the point. The study showed that not all Vikings were Scandinavian and that some Vikings were mixed . That's all. However, with common sense you could figure that out for yourself. I never believed that Vikings were all platinum blond folks.

In general I find people that make a fuss about brown-haired Vikings or blond Romans beyond silly.

This actor is dark blond and was casted for playing a Viking. He definitely represents the look of the unmixed Scandinavian Vikings.

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@Archetype0ne


Please, read properly what I wrote. And for heaven's sake stop accusing me of Nordicism this is an unfair ad hominem and totally baseless. Here the thing, Italians told me that the region where Abate originated from was historically a Germanic settlement, they didn't mention Baltic nor Slavic migration to his region. Therefore, you can't totally reject the possibility of Abate having inherited his pigmentation from ancient Germanic admixture. It’s a matter of fact that these atypical looking Italians come from places that were historically settled by Germanic invaders. So, assuming a correlation between their atypical phenotype and a distant Germanic genetic input isn't far-fetched.

 
I 'm sad when I read this threads. When a scientific paper says by instance it found a surprising 10% of a "foreign" DNA ina pop's, the report in newspaper would be "a huge amount of foreign DNA"...
1- Physical antropology = racism or nordicism or (one day to come: afrocentrism?)...
2- I 've not the possibility to read the scientific paper: I read only some abstract with the newspapers tone = shit, sensationalism, like almost everytime.
3- too much excessive reactions: people believing Scandinavian (and North germanics) were old platine blonds, other people believing "southern" (which "southern", by the way?) were all jet black haired, other thinking even today Scandinavians (even migrants excepted) are only light or darker brown haired, when in fact the true fair haired are between 50 and 70% according to regions (mean around 61-65), and true dark haired (black is an exception) are only around 3,5 and 5%).
4- Vikings changed with time and this cannot be falsified: here they speak of Picts among them (I ignored it, so I learn something her), but we knew already the Gael-Gal's of ireland, mixes of Gaels and Norwegians, we knew the weight of R1b-L21-L22 among Western Norwegians of today (yesterday, maybe!) who cannot be only the result of Irish male slaves for more than a reason.: The too strong proportions of Y-R1a and Y-Q1a among ancient western British Vikings settlements and relatively high levels of Y-Q1a too in current Iceland and Scandinavia which points to something eastern.
5- I agree with the forumers who says the pigmentation is not the unique way to identify populations.
6- Contrary to what someones says (with sincerity) the cinema/movies of a country does not pick up stereotypes concerning its own country: it's the contrary, actors are very often of complete or partly foreign origin, as politicians and singers. It's the other countries movies which uses stereotypes for some characteres supposed to be from a certain country. Not the same thing.
 
@Angela


I found information from official sites about the man on the last pic. He is an Italian that was born in Northern Italy.

His name is Mike Miniati. Surely we can't exclude the possibility, that these blond Italians could be from their maternal side half German or English or that they have very recent mix. However, my point is that some distant Germanic admixture can occasionally pop up among Italians and give them an atypical look. That being said, I never ascribed light hair and eyes in Italians to Germanic genetic input only.


https://www.transfermarkt.it/mike-miniati/leistungsdaten/spieler/402328


https://www.tuttocalciatori.net/Miniati_Mike





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The color of the eyes and hair is affected by multiple factors, some more dominant than the others. These are my results according to "yourDNAportal" (its not free - I payed for that) and, IMHO, all the genes I carry for light hair and eyes did not reach me due to a Viking migration to Iberia.

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It's rather that things are not as they used to be. There is such a thing as demographic change.


Berlin is the most multicultural, the most diverse place in Germany where the native Germans are a minority, to begin with. Germany today isn't like 20 years ago, let alone 50 years ago. Don't forget Germany has 21 million migrants. Furthermore, countless native Germans are mixing with all kinds of migrants and having kids with them for 30 years now. Besides, not all who you think are native Germans are ethnically speaking Germans. Bear in mind, that there are millions of Germans who are basically descendants of assimilated, Germanized Eastern or Southern-Eastern Europeans that live as German locals now. After WWII Germany received millions of refugees from the Eastern Prussian provinces too. Hence, not all white Germans are native Germans. The same goes for Austria, there are plenty Austrians who are Croats, Hungarians by their origin. Anyway, ethnic Germans look very, very similar to Danes even Swedes, especially Northern Germans. And they usually do look like the stereotype. With that being said, today even remote and tiny German villages are pretty diverse due to migrations. So Germany today is not the same as it used to be. The future Germans will be very swarthy and even more diverse.

Yes I know but the Russians, Prussians e.t.c. They have not been doing tourism in Spain for more than 40 years and I could discern between natives and immigrants from other parts of Europe and really if I had been the casting Director for an American Nazi film I realized that it would not have been as easy a casting as it is could presuppose.
 
The color of the eyes and hair is affected by multiple factors, some more dominant than the others. These are my results according to "yourDNAportal" (its not free - I payed for that) and, IMHO, all the genes I carry for light hair and eyes did not reach me due to a Viking migration to Iberia.

4tEzjsa.png

j7Dd9yS.png


rs8028689 is from El Argar I have this also

Cogotas (Vettones) have for blue eyes SNP: rs7183877 (CC) - Relevance:0.1
Blue eye color if part of blue eye color haplotype

I have also rs7183877

La loma del Puerco have rs7183877

It hadn't occurred to me to look at matches to the old specimens with these blue-eyed markers. You have to create the kits

Some more are missing, I'll check it later since you have to create kits and it is heavy
 
rs8028689 is from El Argar I have this also

Cogotas (Vettones) have for blue eyes SNP: rs7183877 (CC) - Relevance:0.1
Blue eye color if part of blue eye color haplotype

I have also rs7183877

La loma del Puerco have rs7183877

It hadn't occurred to me to look at matches to the old specimens with these blue-eyed markers. You have to create the kits

Some more are missing, I'll check it later since you have to create kits and it is heavy

Very nice dear friend Carlos. Cheers (y)
 
I have recessive genes for blond hair and blue eyes (probably from my mother; although she is brown haired and eyed like me, her mother has blue eyes and her brother is dark blond haired)but darker hair being autosomally dominant it will show. My dark-haired maternal grandfather has a red-haired son and a blond son; only my mother inherited his coloring.View attachment 12320
 
I 'm sad when I read this threads. When a scientific paper says by instance it found a surprising 10% of a "foreign" DNA ina pop's, the report in newspaper would be "a huge amount of foreign DNA"...
1- Physical antropology = racism or nordicism or (one day to come: afrocentrism?)...
2- I 've not the possibility to read the scientific paper: I read only some abstract with the newspapers tone = shit, sensationalism, like almost everytime.
3- too much excessive reactions: people believing Scandinavian (and North germanics) were old platine blonds, other people believing "southern" (which "southern", by the way?) were all jet black haired, other thinking even today Scandinavians (even migrants excepted) are only light or darker brown haired, when in fact the true fair haired are between 50 and 70% according to regions (mean around 61-65), and true dark haired (black is an exception) are only around 3,5 and 5%).
4- Vikings changed with time and this cannot be falsified: here they speak of Picts among them (I ignored it, so I learn something her), but we knew already the Gael-Gal's of ireland, mixes of Gaels and Norwegians, we knew the weight of R1b-L21-L22 among Western Norwegians of today (yesterday, maybe!) who cannot be only the result of Irish male slaves for more than a reason.: The too strong proportions of Y-R1a and Y-Q1a among ancient western British Vikings settlements and relatively high levels of Y-Q1a too in current Iceland and Scandinavia which points to something eastern.
5- I agree with the forumers who says the pigmentation is not the unique way to identify populations.
6- Contrary to what someones says (with sincerity) the cinema/movies of a country does not pick up stereotypes concerning its own country: it's the contrary, actors are very often of complete or partly foreign origin, as politicians and singers. It's the other countries movies which uses stereotypes for some characteres supposed to be from a certain country. Not the same thing.


I fully agree with you Moesan. But the researchers themselves made it a mess. They stated that Vikings on the whole were more darkish. But in the research self the pigmenatation result of the Viking samples (442) and that of nowadays Danes were not that different. But even a marker like ORC2 was higher among the Vikings, so how on earth could they chatter about darker Vikings? There is only one thing they showed that meanwhile was diminished namely darker hair....
Anyhow I guess partly due to the fact that Vikings were in de past by some (especially those with a deviation in the right arm) promoted as the ultimate Herrenvolk the association blond/ blue eyes is big. I really can't blame a serie like the Vikings, Ragnar and Rollo (two protagonist) seem to be really representative for the paper, Rollo is pretty 'darkish' (I have to watch twice but he has some kind of undefined kind of hazel eyes):

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I think this is constant with the result of Günther (2018) about the SHG:
The genomic data further allowed us to study the physical appearance of SHGs (S8 Text); for instance, they show a combination of eye color varying from blue to light brown and light skin pigmentation.

I guess this is pretty constant until now.In which the researchers are right I guess is that the horizon of the Vikings was widening, they became 'global players', more diversified, less exclusive Scandic. May be less so for the Scandic 'hillbilly's' that staid at home ;)

Then a question also for friend Carlos (who happens to be the same kind of eye color as I have
about my own pigmentation. Because I'm more 'darkish' than my 'DNA paper trail' says.

Her is what Your DNA portal says.

Ok the hair prediction is pretty well, I have gold blond hair (with very light auburn undertone), very light as a child over the years getting darker, but anyhow your DNA is correct:

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So far so good, but now the eyes, agree that these are chestnut eyes?

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Your DNA portal:
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check frieger
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What's going on here my friends....
 
I fully agree with you Moesan. But the researchers themselves made it a mess. They stated that Vikings on the whole were more darkish. But in the research self the pigmentation result of the Viking samples (442) and that of nowadays Danes were not that different. But even a marker like ORC2 was higher among the Vikings, so how on earth could they chatter about darker Vikings? There is only one thing they showed that meanwhile was diminished namely darker hair....
Anyhow I guess partly due to the fact that Vikings were in de past by some (especially those with a deviation in the right arm) promoted as the ultimate Herrenvolk the association blond/ blue eyes is big. I really can't blame a serie like the Vikings, Ragnar and Rollo (two protagonist) seem to be really representative for the paper, Rollo is pretty 'darkish' (I have to watch twice but he has some kind of undefined kind of hazel eyes):

I think this is constant with the result of Günther (2018) about the SHG:

I guess this is pretty constant until now.In which the researchers are right I guess is that the horizon of the Vikings was widening, they became 'global players', more diversified, less exclusive Scandic. May be less so for the Scandic 'hillbilly's' that staid at home ;)

Ok the hair prediction is pretty well, I have gold blond hair (with very light auburn undertone), very light as a child over the years getting darker, but anyhow your DNA is correct:

Agree but:
I doubt today pigmentation of Scandinavians is the sole heritage of SHG (maybe I understood badly your thoughts here) today Scandinavians as you know have diverse origins in their past, like a lot of pop's; even selection cannot maintain a stable situation when mixings occur;
in fact we still know little about the precise pigmentation induced by genetic mutations, it's multiloci dependant.
We have some unprecise (genetically speaking) but factual observations: outside the Finnic/Saami zones, Scandinavians until recently were living in regions where very fair hair (very light golden brown to almost platine) reached the two thirds of the pop, or very close under or over; the regions were the light and midde brown hairs %'s grow until to concurrence fair hair, with a slight elevation of dark hairs spite rare, are: Western Norway, S-Skania (region of Malmö in southern Sweden), and a region East to Uppsala, known for slaves trade. Western Norway (with diverse variations on the bones side,not only pigmentation) is where we find the more of Y-R1b-L21 in Norway: so: irish influence (from Vikings era?), but can we think only Irish influence?; the Malmö region is in front of Denmark Sjaelland where lies Kopenhagen, where pigmentation in North is also "too" dark (same soft variation); We can suppose there some concentrations for power and slaves trade (?). That said, I doubt all variations in pigmentation in Northern Europe in past and todate could be put on the account of Viking's co-optations and slaves trading.
 
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