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Am I a viking? The modern Viking myth
A lot of Scandinavians take pride in being descendants to the Vikings. It is popular to claim one is a real Viking. But, is the average Börje or Svein really genetically similar to Vikings or even a direct descendant to the fierce Vikings and their women?
Modern genetics says “most likely not”.
There are roughly four generations in 100 years so between modern Scandinavians and the Vikings of year 1000 AD there have been roughly 40 generations. That is around 4000 ancestors.
Each and every human consist of 50/50 of the parents genetical components so you carry only 25% of your grandfathers DNA and the amount shared between you and your great grandfather is 12,5% meaning that going only five generations back you would have had 32 great great great grandfathers (and –mothers) so this would mean that you share only 0,03% of the genetics with any of your great great great grandparents (unless there have been marriages within the family).
MtDNA is only passed on from mother to daughter so it is the direct evidence about where your distant mother of all mothers might have been born or come from 5, 10, 15, 25, or 45 000 years ago, depending on where in the world that very MtDNA show the highest variety. Likewise Y-DNA is only passed on from father to son so belonging to a haplogroup reveals on where your Adam of fathers might have come from. That you carry one kind of haplotype does not reveal anything about what your mothers father Y-DNA was and for sure not what your fathers mothers fathers MtDNA was.
Among populations certain haplotypes are more common than others and we can conclude that if population 1 consists of people mostly carrying haplotypes A, C, D and F while population 2 consists of people carrying haplotypes B, C, E, and F it can be said that they have a partially different origin (or partially same if you wish). But if population 1 is compared to population 3 where haplotypes G, H and M are the only ones, we can say that they have a completely different origin.
So, what are the most common haplotypes among modern Scandinavians and how do they compare with haplotypes which have been detected in Iron/Viking age Scandinavians?
It is easier to detect MtDNA than Y-DNA from bones so we can only tell what the haplotypes of the mother lineages of ancient individuals have been.
Evidence of Authentic DNA from Danish Viking Age Skeletons Untouched by Humans for 1,000 Yearshttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...tool=pmcentrez“Several of the haplotypes are either infrequent or have not been observed in modern Scandinavians. The observation of haplogroup I in the present study (,2% in modern Scandinavians) supports our previous findings of a pronounced frequency of this
haplogroup in Viking and Iron Age Danes.”
There is also other confirmed Viking era DNA, from Norway. The remains of an evidently powerful female from the Oseberg shipburial was confirmed to have belonged to a haplotype rare in modern day Norwegians but common in central Asia.
It should be quite clear that if Viking age “Danes” and “Norwegians” had different haplotypes from modern Danes and Norwegians, their DNA have not passed on to the Danes of today in any significant numbers.
But what about the linguistic connection? We know for sure that the language spoken in Viking age Scandinavia was a predecessor to later Scandinavian languages. If they spoke the same language (sort of) aren’t they then the same people? It’s not that simple. Language can either be imposed by, accepted by or passed on to one group either by simply serving as a lingua franca between groups originally speaking different languages or because one group has something the other group wants to be part of. It may be goods, position or religion.
For example, 98% of the Irish speak English too, but it’s not their ancestral language.
So, is there Viking DNA lurking in the average Scandinavian? Yes, but only a very small portion of it.
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Most remote villages and fjords have been fairly closed systems, with only occasional incomers until recent infrastructural development, so its obvious that the same genes have been swilling around in them for centuries. 
Originally Posted by Osweo
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