Do Ulster Scots cluster closer to west-Scandinavians or to Gaelic/Celtic Irish?

[Voyt]

..

[billErobreren]

They're kind of wedged between Hebridians and the Northern English. I'd go for Gaelic.

[PaleoEuropean]

I think they are a diverse group, a lot are Gaelic/Germanic/Welsh/Scandinavian lowlanders a handful came from the highlands.

[Bellbeaking]

Ulster scots are a little closer to other some Other 'Mainland' Brits than to Gaels. But all British Isles groups are closer to Each other than they are too West Scandinavians. They are all quite closely related to Scandinavian people genetically.

[Grace O'Malley]

This plot shows that they are all quite close.



All of British and Irish are close to Scandinavians. With Irish outside of British populations they are closest to Dutch and Scandinavians. Some English are also close to Scandinavians but there are some English closer to South Dutch and Belgians before Scandinavians.

This is Ancestry's newest plot. You can see that English & Welsh are more spread out than Irish/Scots.

[Voyt]

This plot shows that they are all quite close.

Great map, this. So east England is more Scandinavian genetically than Scotland (except for Orkney). This makes sense as Scots defended themselves from the Norse a lot more valiantly. Interesting though that North Wales is so much more Scandinavian than Southwest Wales; anyone have the history on that? Southwest Wales is the closest to Iberian people so they probably sailed there.

Another thing that confuses me is that Ulster Scots (NICS) cluster closer to North Scots (NCS) even though they were transplanted from Lowland Scotland/North England? What's with that?

[Grace O'Malley]

Great map, this. So east England is more Scandinavian genetically than Scotland (except for Orkney). This makes sense as Scots defended themselves from the Norse a lot more valiantly. Interesting though that North Wales is so much more Scandinavian than Southwest Wales; anyone have the history on that? Southwest Wales is the closest to Iberian people so they probably sailed there.

Another thing that confuses me is that Ulster Scots (NICS) cluster closer to North Scots (NCS) even though they were transplanted from Lowland Scotland/North England? What's with that?

The map doesn't show who is closer to Scandinavian but both the PoBI and Irish DNA Atlas found that Orcadians, Irish and West Scots had a high Norwegian input in their admixture while the English had more Anglo-Saxon. Also in that map the South Scottish are closer to Irish groups and in fact cluster with them.

This is from the Irish DNA Atlas.

A striking result of our admixture analysis is the surprising amount of Norwegian-like ancestry in our Irish clusters. We also detected high levels of Norwegian ancestry in Orcadian and Scottish clusters, and relatively low Norwegian ancestry in English and Welsh clusters. The Norwegian clusters that contribute significant ancestry to any Irish or British clusters predominantly consist of individuals from counties on the north or western coasts of Norway (Fig. 3b). These areas are noted to be regions where Norse Viking activity originated from8. Whilst this surprising Norwegian signal in Ireland is most likely due to Norwegian admixture into Ireland, indeed this would corroborate with accounts of Irish slave trade in the Viking era29, and Y-chromosomal analysis (unpublished).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17124-4

This is from the People of the British Isles Study.

The homogeneity of the east, central and southern British cluster (red squares) with no obvious differences in the Danish contribution (EU18 dark red) between them and the more northern English populations, strongly suggests that the Danish Vikings, in spite of their major influence through the “Danelaw’ and many place names of Danish origin, contributed little of their DNA to the English population

https://www.peopleofthebritishisles....sletter6_1.pdf

I have come to the conclusion though that we need to compare populations against ancient genomes to really see what contributions different groups have made into countries. I don't think comparing modern populations against each other is how to do this. They need some good studies looking at ancient genomes across different period and seeing how they have changed the population structure. Luckily these studies are starting to be done so in the future I think we will be able to answer questions about what groups have contributed to different parts of Europe.

[Creoda]

What's special about Ulster Scots? They're just British. Many Gaels are closer to West Scandinavians than Ulstermen are.

[Creoda]

Great map, this. So east England is more Scandinavian genetically than Scotland (except for Orkney). This makes sense as Scots defended themselves from the Norse a lot more valiantly. Interesting though that North Wales is so much more Scandinavian than Southwest Wales; anyone have the history on that? Southwest Wales is the closest to Iberian people so they probably sailed there.

Another thing that confuses me is that Ulster Scots (NICS) cluster closer to North Scots (NCS) even though they were transplanted from Lowland Scotland/North England? What's with that?

North (East) Scots and Ulster Scots are just Britons, that's why.

Northwest England is one of the most Scandinavian influenced parts of England, North Wales got some of that. South Welsh are just pre-Germanic Britons, like Cornwall.

[Daco Celtic]

What's special about Ulster Scots?

They're feisty. We have a lot of them in the U.S.