What Did Vikings Look Like and What Was Their Genetic (DNA) History?
Channel: Celtic History Decoded
Date: 2023-02-26

Please support this channel on Patreon and get ad-free videos and other benefits: https://www.patreon.com/historydecoded

Please Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/CelticHistory 

Please donate through PayPal using this link: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=QFB9ZECHZJDF6 – you can also send money through PayPal straight to chdecoded@gmail.com if you don’t want to use the link.

Subscribe to Celtic History Decoded: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCS3M_uNHH2iOJkpGhkO2SA?sub_confirmation=1

Follow Celtic History Decoded on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/celtichistorydecoded/ 

Subscribe to World History Decoded – https://www.youtube.com/@worldhistorydecoded 

Chapters: 
0:00 Intro
0:20 Viking Hair Colour
0:55 How Tall Were Vikings? 
2:26 Female and Male Facial Structure 
3:02 Viking Appearance 
3:36 Filming Location 
4:15 Viking Genetic History 
5:05 Viking DNA Vs Mainland Scandinavia 
6:54 Danish Viking or Anglo-Saxon DNA?
7:35 A Family Affair
9:29 Support  

What did Vikings actually look like and what was their genetic history? 

Vikings are often portrayed as tall, strong and blonde, but how close to the truth is this? ”I have never seen people with a more perfect body build. They are like date palms and their skin is reddish," is how the Arabic author, Ibn Fadlan, described the Vikings. 

What colour hair did Vikings have? Certain research has shown that the Vikings in West Scandinavia (i.e. Denmark) were mostly red-haired. However, in North Scandinavia, in the area around Stockholm, blonde hair was more common. A 2020 study however found that Viking frequently had children with people from other lands, and this led to many Vikings having dark hair as opposed to the blonde hair you would normally associate with Vikings.  

It is thought that the faces of men and women in the Viking Age were more alike than they are today. The women’s faces were more masculine than women’s today, with prominent brow ridges. On the other hand, the Viking man’s appearance was more feminine than that of men today, with a less prominent jaw and brow ridges.

In fact, this similarity means that it’s difficult to determine the sex of a Viking skeleton from the skull alone, and other markers need to be used, like pelvis width for instance. Beards were common for Viking men, and men’s hair was usually long, around shoulder-length, with slaves being the main ones with short hair. 

How tall were the Vikings? This is a simple question, but the answer is annoyingly complicated. The average height of a Viking is estimated to have been somewhere between 172-175 cm tall (5.6-5.7 ft), and a woman had an average height of 158 cm (5,1 ft), with access to nutrition being a key feature in this. Although finding an authoritative figure on this proved tricky. For the figures I’ve seen, this doesn’t seem particularly taller than other Europeans. Although slightly late in the Viking period, Englishmen are thought to have been on average around 1.72 m in the 11 century. 

Sources:

Medievalists.net - Largest-ever study of Viking genetics reveals new insights https://www.medievalists.net/2020/09/viking-genetics/ 

Margaryan et al. - Population genomics of the Viking world, Nature | Vol 585 | September 2020 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8.epdf?sharing_token=ro3ycyxJXbAzzIUWJzLVTdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OtPvex4nPtepui57w-C83dxxMelCv9A703wB2w5NziFhtiIakSivme9afpTtkw2JJ_-zBC7PvjWHgFbMTFEgyTiLN8PHpXb_kvTGai7szPP2YqAvq7h_P8El8yJdbcRWM%3D 

Cell - The genetic history of Scandinavia from the Roman Iron Age to the present,  VOLUME 186, ISSUE 1, P32-46.E19, JANUARY 05, 2023 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01468-4?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867422014684%3Fshowall%3Dtrue 

Ancient DNA reveals the truth about Vikings - BBC REEL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kEYYOQpTVQ 

What did the Vikings look like? The National Museum of Denmark - https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/the-people/appearance/ 

Vikings, Appearance - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings 
 
What did the Vikings look like? https://skjalden.com/what-did-the-vikings-look-like/ 

How Tall Were the Vikings? Norse Magic and Beliefs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81dfawrys-Q 

#vikings #history #scotland