One reason I quite like Norman Davies’ book The Isles is that it is a history of Britain and Ireland which explicitly aims to not privilege the story of the English inordinately. As the most powerful and numerous people of the British Isles the English loom large, but in the period between Gildas and Bede things were very different. In the early 600s the Welsh king Cadwallon ap Cadfan conquered and held Northumbria for a period, northern England from the Irish Sea to the North Sea. But this was the last time that a Celtic monarch held land in eastern England, unless you count the Tudors.
In The Isles, written at the turn of the century, Davies promotes the view dominant among historians at that time that the transition from British Celtic to Anglo-Saxon occurred through diffusion of elite culture. He alludes to the fact that in the year 700 the law code of Wessex alludes explicitly to the fact the weregild paid for the death of a Saxon was many-fold greater than that paid for a Briton (of the same class status). This suggests that many Britons were still resident in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The contrasting view, which was dominant in the early 20th century, was that the English replaced the Celts in toto. The Irish, Welsh, and to some extent the Scots, were viewed as racially distinct from the Germanic English.
2015’s The fine scale genetic structure of the British population answered many of these questions. It turns out the maximal positions were incorrect. The authors estimate that 10-40% of the ancestry in eastern and southern England (the red positions on the map) derive from Germanic peoples which we might term Saxon, Angles, and Jutes. Even if the fraction is as low as 10% that is not trivial. If we take a value closer to ~25%, unless there were massive reproductive advantages for elites, it could not have just been diffusion from the elite. Archaeologists also see wholesale changes in agricultural patterns in eastern England, indicative of a transfer of a whole folkway.
All that being said it is likely that the majority of the ancestry of the population of England proper descends from Britons. In fact, once the Anglo-Saxon cultural hegemony was established it seems that some elite Britons may also have changed their identity. It is always a curious fact that the names of the first kings in the genealogy of the House of Wessex are distinctively Celtic. Just as Romano-Gallic aristocrats began aping the styles and mores of the Frankish elite in the 6th century, so perhaps some British warlords became Saxons.
Using similar methods many of the same authors have now put out a preprint on Ireland, Insular Celtic population structure and genomic footprints of migration. Unlike the earlier work on Britain, they’ve acknowledged the ancient DNA results which have reshaped our understanding of population turnover in Ireland. That being said, they are focused on more recent events, as well as spatial structure in the modern era.
Though they don’t have access to as detailed a regional data set as in the earlier work on Britain, in this case, the authors managed to detect a lot of regional population structure within Ireland. Why? Though the Irish are relatively homogeneous, as all Northern Europeans are, looking at long tracts of the genome and the patterns therein can squeeze out more information.
The figure at the top of this post shows how well they can cluster individuals geographically: they’ve basically recapitulated the “map of the British Isles.” There aren’t too many surprises. Western Ireland seems to exhibit greater genetic differences as a function of distance. Probably because it’s less developed, and perhaps because it has been less impacted by outsiders. Ulster and southern Scotland are strongly connected genetically. There are two issues going on here. First, the famous migration of Protestants into this region of Ireland from Scotland and northern England that occurred after the conquest of the 16th century. And second, the earlier migration of Irish to Scotland, which resulted in the creation of the Dal Riata kingdom.
Additionally, the authors detect more admixture in several parts of Ireland from Norse than they had anticipated. The mixing of Scandinavians and Irish created a hybrid culture, the Norse-Gaels, which was highly influential around the Irish Sea. So it would not be exactly surprising if there was a greater Scandinavian contribution to Irish ancestry than had been anticipated.
Of greater interest to me is the impact of social-political institutions on the genetic structure or lack thereof. Both Britain and Ireland have homogenized modal clusters. In Britain, this is associated with the expanding cultural zone of Anglo-Saxon rule, and later became the core of England. In Ireland, it seems to be the Pale, where Anglo-Norman rule was dominant for many centuries. Rapid cultural change seems to induce a state of panmixia. Genetic distinctiveness in the British Isles seems to have persisted in populations which were geographically isolated, or politically insulated, from expansive, assimilative, and integrative cultures. The modal cluster in Ireland is far smaller than in England, which nicely correlates with the much more limited impact of the Anglo-Norman ascendency of the medieval period.
“Unlike the earlier work on Britain, they’ve acknowledged the ancient DNA work which has reshaped our understanding of population turnover in Ireland.”
The new paper shares four authors with that paper on ancient DNA work.
De ar Razib.
I have found some of your articles very interesting over the last few years; especially those to do with south asian ancestry.
I myself am british tamil but my heritage is from jaffna srilanka. I have recently transferred my ftdna autosomal family finder results to Gedmatch and surprisingly found that I have tens of European matches ranging from 5-7 generation cousins. I’ve used the triangulation method and found others who also match. However, my ftdna heritage does not show any European links although the admixture in the gedmatch calculator indicate other world trace population links.
I’m left with the notion to what extent are these real matches, as it will have a profound effect on my outlook of my own heritage and the possible forgotten links between jaffna tamils and the colonial powers from 1500.
I was wondering what your thoughts might be on the matter?
P.s my ydna is j2b2 m241 and xdna hv14 if that helps?
Many thanks
The modern-day paucity of Norse-Viking Y chromosome haplotypes may be a consequence of drift with the small patrilineal effective population size, or could have social origins with Norse males having less influence after their military defeat and demise as an identifiable community in the 11th century, with persistence of the autosomal signal through
recombination.
This seems to be true for a large portion of the British Isles and was shown in an older study too, in which non-R1b and R1a specifically was much higher in Medieval times:
The medieval sample from West Lancashire shows a significant increase in the proportion of hgR1a1 with respect to its modern counterpart (P = 0.044, Fisher’s exact test), and for the Wirral samples, the increase is close to significance (P = 0.051). These observations seem compatible with a higher proportion of Viking lineages in the medieval than in the modern Wirral and West Lancashire samples.
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/25/2/301/1129414
That in mind the Norse genetic legacy on Ireland seems to be much higher than previously thought and the difference between the original Celtic populations and the modern ones is therefore larger too. The Germanic conquest being a homogenising factor on both Britain and Ireland. Why this isn’t reflected by yDNA variation can be explained by the clan based society on Ireland which might have erased the older male lineages of the defeated.
What I find most interesting about the quoted PCA is the strong outlier position of South Western British Celts. Look at Southern Wales in particular.
There might be different ways to explain this, from an original Celtic character of the region with rather limited Germanic influences, or Roman era migrations and even much older prehistoric population structure of the region.
How Scandinavian are the Irish, exactly? If you read this paper front to back and look through the supplements you still won’t have an answer. They provide the dating of the North European mixture, give you a percentage breakdown of what the admixing population was like, but that’s it. We’re told that the Norse impact on Ireland was larger than previously expected, but all that indicates is that it’s larger than 2% or so.
@Halvorson: You are right, I saw no exact numbers provided by this paper.
However, even based on the most obviously Norse yDNA alone (I1, R1a etc.), the percentage would be much higher than 2% for the Norse legacy.
But as we know by now, the autosomal impact is higher than the paternal one. Estimates for the numbers by region would great.
Ideally we need aDNA samples from Late Iron age/Early Christian period to provide baseline for admixture flow into Irish population post 800AD. At the moment the most recent aDNA genome from Ireland is on order of 3,000 years old!
During the economic boom several major sites were discovered due to road construction. For example up in NW in Donegal a unknown cemetry was found that had been in use from circa 700AD to 1300AD and contained circa 1,300 decent quality skeletons. There was also a major site found in South County Dublin in 90’s with over 1,000 remains.
If we were to extract a decent sampleset from both sites (arrange chronoligically by C-14 etc.) it should be possible to model modern irish set as a mixture of ancient + some other population. Ideally of course for theory of Norse admixture it would be good to have late Iron age/Viking period genomes from Scandinavia.
Leaving that aside I wonder if one possible vector for Norse like ancestry in Ireland is the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Here we had the rise of a hybrid ‘Norse-Gael’ polity which saw a language shift from Old Norse to Middle Irish. The later ‘Kingdom of the Isles’ under the McDonalds (Mac Domhnaill) is good representation of this hybrid identity, claiming Irish descent (and genealogy) but been both nautical and military power. From 1250 onwards we see use of ‘Gallowglasses’ (Gallóghlach — literally foreign warrion, but really meaning ‘warrior from hebrides) use in Ireland, which would contuine up until the end of nine year war in 1603. I wonder if this constant low-level migration of fighting men from western Scotland might have resulted in more in way of ‘norse ancestry’ coming into Ireland (assuming the Gallowglasses were of mixed Norse-Gael origin)
Pretty importantly as well in this study, re: connections between Scotland and Ireland, they note “First, the presence of individuals with strong Irish affinity among the third generation PoBI Scottish sample can be plausibly attributed to major economic migration from Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries”.
Hence the switcharound in their chromopainter PCA (and to a lesser extent the t-sne run included), where the SSC (South Scotland) cluster sits proximate to the Central (CLN) and North Leinster/Ulster clusters (NLU), while the NI/Cumbria/S Scotland cluster (NICS) sits proximate to the North Scotland (NSC) cluster. A population swap.
And that has political effects today – https://quarterly.demos.co.uk/article/issue-3/516/.
@Halvarson, yes, that would have been interesting to see included, if they were actually able to estimate an amount as opposed to just finding a signal. They include British ancestry %s in present day Irish, but as these are basically just from Scots, less likely to have an impact on selected variants (IRC there are a very few variants which show fairly high Fst between Scandinavia and Ireland, at least IRF4, but would be even fewer such between Scotland and Ireland).
I looked at this map too.
Southern Wales is to old Mercia (= west Midlands) what Cornwall is to Devon – except emphatically more so. Seems the gradient was softer in the southwest than along the Welsh Marches. Which does seem to correlate with their histories: centuries of war and mutual dislike across Offa’s Dike, centuries of Cornish retreat along that peninsula.
North Wales, on this map, looks like what Dogger Island should look like if it hadn’t sunk. I am quite serious. I wonder about a relict population of old European hunter-gatherers.
An additional paper to consider:
Irish DNA Atlas
Abstract here with link to PDF on the page:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17124-4
“The extent of population structure within Ireland is largely unknown, as is the impact of historical
migrations. Here we illustrate fine-scale genetic structure across Ireland that follows geographic
boundaries and present evidence of admixture events into Ireland. Utilising the ‘Irish DNA Atlas’, a
cohort (n = 194) of Irish individuals with four generations of ancestry linked to specific regions in Ireland, in combination with 2,039 individuals from the Peoples of the British Isles dataset, we show that the Irish population can be divided in 10 distinct geographically stratified genetic clusters; seven of ‘Gaelic’ Irish ancestry, and three of shared Irish-British ancestry. In addition we observe a major genetic barrier to the north of Ireland in Ulster.
Using a reference of 6,760 European individuals and two ancient Irish genomes, we demonstrate high levels of North-West French-like and West Norwegian-like ancestry within Ireland. We show that that our ‘Gaelic’ Irish clusters present homogenous levels of ancient Irish ancestries. We additionally detect admixture events that provide evidence of Norse-Viking gene flow into Ireland, and reflect the Ulster Plantations. Our work informs both on Irish history, as well as the study of Mendelian and complex disease genetics involving populations of Irish ancestry.”
Good paper and they even tell us a number:
Therefore, we are able to provide an upper estimate of ~20% Norwegian ancestry within Ireland, but unable to provide an empirical lower limit.
[…]
Both Ireland and Orkney share elevated levels of Norwegian-related ancestry, which could provide an alternative explanation for this grouping. However our PCA suggests no large scale gene flow between the two populations.
[…]
All areas traditionally associated with Norse Viking activity (Ireland, Scotland, and Orkney) present relatively high levels of Norwegian-like ancestry. A ‘Norse Viking’ admixture event is further supported by our Globetrotter analysis, which detected significant admixture events into Ireland. This introduced a Norwegian/Scandinavian component corresponding with the time of historical Viking activity in Ireland.
Some skepticism is in order over papers that use clustering methods like this. In the supplements of the Irish DNA Atlas the authors use these same techniques to estimate the ancestry profile of Norwegians and this is what they come up with:
https://imgur.com/a/uOKLg
Big contributions from roaming Spanish and Polish Vikings, hardly any from next door Swedes. Swedes have apparently had a much large genetic impact on Britain and Ireland (5-8%), even though they never raided those places. So don’t take the percentages in the paper as gospel.
There’s 0.89 correlation between the frequency of the averaged German clusters and the sole Danish cluster. In Britain these components almost always appear in roughly the same proportion, which suggests that this is an Anglo-Saxon signal. In the English these components represent about 1/3rd of total ancestry, which could be around the true figure. In some Irish groups there is a much higher ratio of Danish to German which suggests that the black Lochlann made a larger impact here in the Danelaw.
If you add up all the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish clusters the Irish look 30% Scandinavian, which I think is implausibly high. So let’s wait to pontificate until we have better ancient genomes.
I totally agree and Germanic, including Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Norman and Vikings mostly from Norway and Denmark, are a rather close knit groups. The idea however, that the only significant Germanic influence is Anglo-Saxon, restricted to the plantations and Ulster, with the rest of Ireland representing ancient Celtic structures, is completely wrong. As are the estimates for Viking influence based on yDNA alone. All the studies quoted here show that the impact of the Viking settlements was underestimated so far, but the methods are still insufficient for estimating the exact amount of gene flow with high certainty.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me unless we have samples of Irish and Norse DNA from late antiquity, it would be hard to determine which direction the admixture between the Norse and the Irish ran. I say that because the Vikings engaged in a great deal of slave raids on the coast of Ireland. These slaves ended up in various places, including elsewhere in the British Isles and in the Muslim world, but some of them may have ended up within the Norse core. If the admixture was mostly from the Irish into the Norse, rather than the other way around, it would help to explain why there is so little evidence of Norse Y-DNA in Ireland. Instead, we should look for evidence of “Irish” Mt-DNA in Scandinavia.
The paper did that too and British slaves and mixed Norse made it to Norway and Iceland. But all estimates are lower for that direction of the gene flow.
@Karl, if the direction runs Ireland female->Iceland->Iceland males->Norway, then mtdna is less transitive. Seems unlikely based on present day population size though.
This indicates measuring ancient Norse mtdna may be difficult though – http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1660/20130384. More fluctuations in Icelandic and Norse population mtdna due to small, structured pops and drift (small structured pops allows more drift than total Norwegian pooled population size would?).
I hope it’s not going to take long to get pre-Viking Norse DNA. Scandinavia has mountains. Send some parties up those mountains looking for stiffs and, hey presto, boreal Oetzi.
By my understanding Frankish elite fashion was based on Roman military fashions, not the other way round. (Same for Anglo Saxons south of the Thames according to Guy Halsall.) And then Danubian (Attila, Goths etc) fashions entered after that period (for example the grave of Childeric), these also influenced by the connection of these elites to the Roman military.
andrew, well i’m thinking the shift to trousers and apparently mustaches? (at least in gaul) of course since the franks were long time federates of the romans there was a lot of roman influence in ‘frankish’ ways
Razib I was thinking you must be talking about grave goods and the like because trousers and mustaches are not preserved. There are of course occasional poetic descriptions of Franks by people like Sidonius Apollinarus, but he is normally seen as playing around with classical tropes (such as calling Franks Scythians and so on). In any case, he did indeed describes them having close-fitting shorts (trousers as such would I think not be so new) and moustaches. But by this time it becomes difficult to make any contrast between the Frankish elite and any other military force or elite in northern France. Based on some interpretations, Aegidius, a Roman who did not accept his new emperor, might even have been the founder of the Kingship of the Franks which Childeric later took up (Alaric I style). Gregory of Tours certainly says he held this Kingship.
It was pointed out about the POBI study that the red “English” area nearly perfectly maps the heavily Romanized area of Britain so it probably was on it’s way to homogeneity even before any Saxon “Night of the long knives”. The tribal areas remained distinctve.
Obs wrote:
“The Germanic conquest being a homogenising factor on both Britain and Ireland. Why this isn’t reflected by yDNA variation can be explained by the clan based society on Ireland which might have erased the older male lineages of the defeated.”
Did I miss a chapter or two in history Obs? What Germanic conquest of Ireland? Do you mean the Norse who only held some coastal areas? The French speaking Cambro Normans (that in Britain were a mix of people from different French and Belgian areas), with their hodgepodge of mixed south Wales colonists also from various areas and Welshmen who took part of the country under the Anjou French kings? Did you mean the Tudor conquest that relied on mostly people from Ireland to carry out under the Welsh monarchs?