Scandinavian Vikings in England

[trebli]

A story about Ragnar ‘Hairy Britches’ and Scandinavian Vikings in England.





http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-invaders.html

[Snusdog]

AKA..........Itchy Balls

[squeezyjohn]

They had the control of the north-eastern half of England for hundreds of years. It's not surprising that many of our place names round there are almost the same as those you see in Norway and Sweden - and modern English is still full of words derived from old Norse.

The next time you use the following words in English - think at how close our cultures came back then:

Anger, Die, Egg, Guest, Sprint, Ugly, Wrong, Window, Leather, Husband, Hell, Cake ... we wouldn't have any of those words without the Vikings.

If they'd have stayed - I'm sure snus would also be one of the words in our common vocabulary.

[trebli]

Squeezy, have you had the opportunity to read the three part History of England by G. M. Trevelyan? I found the first volume to be absorbing. I've long had an interest in pre-Celt Briton. I am saving volumes two and three for my dotage.

Modern DNA testing seems to confirm Trevelyan's theory of those "mysterious, short and dark Iberians" who inhabited the British Isles before the taller and fairer Celts and Saxons first arrived.

[crullers]

I find this is a very interesting period of history. I'll put that three part History of England on my reading list trebli. The second season of the TV series Vikings is starting this week and the first season was excellent. I'm not sure how historically accurate it is but it didn't seem to suffer from over-embellishment as most TV series do. And here's my favourite piece of music that references the viking hoards

[squeezyjohn]

Trebli - I haven't read the whole lot ... but I'm not sure I agree with Trevelyan on lots of things historically speaking.

Going back to pre-celtic times is obviously interesting because of the long time periods going back to the mists of times past. And although Britain was indeed occupied several times during the period when the land bridge to Europe still existed - what's being studied there is very small bits of archaeology and a lot of speculation! But all the evidence I've seen points to the fact that the original Celts that still can be found in Britain are represented by the shorter, darker skinned and black haired traits with DNA similarities to Iberian people. Whereas the fair skinned, red/blonde haired genetic traits that were for many years linked to a Celtic background are actually the evidence of a massive Viking influence in the western coastline of Britain for many years.

I wish I had more evidence to hand ... but there was a fantastic project several years ago on BBC Radio 4 looking at maternal (mitochondrial) line and paternal (Y chromosome) line back to well defined markers from different areas of the world and it was pretty much conclusive proof that despite the history of Britain showing waves of invasion and conquest ... the actual genetic makeup of present day British people is surprisingly uniform with a majority of celtic DNA across even the most easterly parts of England with smatterings of the Roman, Saxon, Viking, and Norman thought to have entirely taken over in each wave. They didn't - they just ruled for a bit and their culture took over. The indigenous white population are on average still genetically most linked to the Celts with smatterings of Norman, Viking, Saxon, Roman, African and Asian.

I normally hate to place any kind of significance on the genetic origins of anyone because of the dangerous lessons of the past ... but I deny anyone to suggest that it's not fascinating and a tool that can teach us a lot about the history of humankind.