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‘Viking’ was a job, not a matter of heredity: ancient DNA study (2020)

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Re: ‘Viking’ was a job, not a matter of heredity: ancient DNA study (2020)

#131

Post by henrikschroder »

vintermann wrote: post #85
beloch wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title is indeed odd. The new (to me, at least) idea here is that the different regions of Scandinavia didn't mix as much, "on the job" or genetically, as I thought they would have. They each carved out their own territories and mixed with the local population, but not with each other to a significant degree. It's surprising to find that more genetic material was making it's way back to parts of Scandinavia from t…

A historian I respect - don't want to name him in case I accidentally misrepresent his ideas - has speculated that the Norse didn't mix with the Sami because having a separate tribe of hunters (no major reindeer farming back then) was useful to them. Almost like a caste. If people live side by side for 1000s of years, I think that's fair to speculate - there has to be a reason they didn't just assimilate into each ot…

> If people live side by side for 1000s of years, I think that's fair to speculate - there has to be a reason they didn't just assimilate into each other.

Yeah, they had completely different lifestyles that were reliant on completely different biomes. The Norse were farmers, they needed farmland and a little bit of forest for wood and hunting. The Sami were reindeer herders, they needed tundra. Neither could live where the other lived, they spoke languages from completely different families, they had completely different cultural traditions. Neither side had much that the other side wanted. Of course they didn't assimilate, how could they?

But when the industrial revolution came and iron ore was discovered up north, suddenly the desire to assimilate them (or genocide them...) appeared, because now they had something that the people in the south wanted very, very much.

> Though already in Harald Fairhair's day, it seems there were also Sami living among the Norse as boatwrights and smiths and maybe also as wandering professional hunters, hunting livestock predators for bounties - we know that kept going for a long time.

My understanding is that the Norse respected the Sami as a people different from them, and were a little bit afraid of their "magic", because they didn't understand it. They were perfectly happy to live apart, and do a little bit of trade in goods and services. Why go north to raid the Sami, when you could sail south and raid the fat and rich English or the French instead?

Re: ‘Viking’ was a job, not a matter of heredity: ancient DNA study (2020)

#132

Post by jeltz »

tdb7893 wrote: post #78
ecshafer wrote: post #8

I am not sure why they used this title for this study as that is not the important part. We already have known Viking was a job description, thats been known for hundreds of years. We also knew that viking settlement was widespread. This study used DNA sequencing to settle the debate on if vikings from certain areas went to certain areas, and if they mixed. It seems to confirm the theory that the norse did NOT mix, a…

You say "we" knew but the vast majority of people don't. It's not exactly common knowledge among people I know so it's unsurprising a title for general audiences uses it as a hook.

Scandinavians and historians? This study did not reveal anything which was not taught in school in Sweden in the 90s when I grew up. I guess useful to verify what we knew with even more sources, but there was no new discovery here.

Re: ‘Viking’ was a job, not a matter of heredity: ancient DNA study (2020)

#133

Post by henrikschroder »

beloch wrote: post #82
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe you hate your neighbors more than you hate the exotic foreign visitor? hmm, of course current news would rather undermine that theory, but maybe today's exotic foreign countries are about as close as neighboring countries were back in Viking times.

It's a distasteful, but relevant, aspect of vikings that they were slavers as well as raiders. If you went viking, a large part of the booty you brought back walked on two legs and had genes to pass on. Perhaps the Norse liked their neighbours just enough not to make many of them "visitors".

I think the explanation is much simpler, we know the Norse were a bit afraid of the Sami. They viewed them as a weird non-threatening neighbour people who had a weird language and weird magic. So you traded with them, you respected them, you said please and thank you, and then you were happy to see them gone because you didn't want them to curse you. (And I would assume the Sami were very happy to foster this belief since they were much weaker militarily)

Unlike the fat and rich continental Europeans that the Norse viewed as ripe for plunder, they did not fear them at all.

Re: ‘Viking’ was a job, not a matter of heredity: ancient DNA study (2020)

#134

Post by lo_zamoyski »

troosevelt wrote: post #111
samaltmanfried wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It irks me because it usually manifests as embracing cartoonish stereotypes of the most superficial aspects of the culture: "I'm 1/64th Italian, so I like pizza. I'm 1/16th German, so I like beer. etc." It doesn't keep me up at night, but I think it's tacky and vulgar.

It might usually manfiest as that or you're picking out the most superficial parts of people's identity to criticize. It's just not how I and others view it when we think about where the people who made us come from. Or, to put it another way: your criticism is tacky and vulgar. Perhaps what you're describing is "cosplaying" but that's not how immigrant communities see themselves. I do in fact know the perecentages o…

> that's not how immigrant communities see themselves.

Whoa, who's talking about immigrant families? Immigrant families came from somewhere else. That's their identity, because it's where they came from. But if your family has been here for a few generations, then I have news for you: you're not immigrants!

> I do in fact know the perecentages of my national makeup. Nobles know their ancestry down to the smallest detail, is somebody really tacky for knowing that technically they are 1/4th Italian?

The game of percentages is absurd to begin with. It's one thing to know you have some ancestors from Japan. It's another to say "I am 12.5% Japanese!" What the hell does that even mean? When noble families recognize their ancestry, first off, they don't make ridiculous claims of percentage. No nobleman says "I am 1/16 Catalonian". They'd laugh at you. "You mean to tell me your culture is 1/6 Catalonian?" Second, they don't identify with the culture of an ancestor if it has no presence and reality for them. The British royal family has German roots (and like all European royal families, a complicated web of ancestry spanning virtually all of Europe in some way or another), yet they don't claim to be German or Hessian. It would be absurd. They're the British royal family, and much of them have been the British royal family for some time!

(I do recognize cultural identity as complex, of course, more complex than how many people see it, but it's complex when the cultural dimensions are actually real, not fabricated by the imagination.)

> I don't think attacking somebody's identity is ever fair; it costs you nothing but is everything to them.

But it's not their identity. It's a pretense. If some distant ancestor's cultural origin is everything to someone, then you're proving the absurdity of of the whole thing.

Like I say, it's a socially-accepted form of cosplaying.

Re: ‘Viking’ was a job, not a matter of heredity: ancient DNA study (2020)

#135

Post by samaltmanfried »

troosevelt wrote: post #111
samaltmanfried wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It irks me because it usually manifests as embracing cartoonish stereotypes of the most superficial aspects of the culture: "I'm 1/64th Italian, so I like pizza. I'm 1/16th German, so I like beer. etc." It doesn't keep me up at night, but I think it's tacky and vulgar.

It might usually manfiest as that or you're picking out the most superficial parts of people's identity to criticize. It's just not how I and others view it when we think about where the people who made us come from. Or, to put it another way: your criticism is tacky and vulgar. Perhaps what you're describing is "cosplaying" but that's not how immigrant communities see themselves. I do in fact know the perecentages o…

Like many Americans, I am from a European immigrant background. For what it's worth, I have spent a lot of time in x-land, and I speak x-ish. But I am an American. My ethnicity is mixed. I grew up in America. You would never know my heritage unless I told you, which I probably never would. Because I hate hearing the "Me too! I'm x-ish too!" spiel from another American who can't even pronounce their own surname correctly.

Re: ‘Viking’ was a job, not a matter of heredity: ancient DNA study (2020)

#136

Post by samaltmanfried »

Throaway1982 wrote: post #123
clutter55561 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that a lot of people are irked by the sheer inconsistency of the American culture: celebrate your immigrant heritage at the same time you protect “your” American land and keep those pesky immigrants out. Not personal.

Really so its okay if a Canadian, Australian or New Zealander does it?

It wouldn't be. But they never do it, so I don't have to worry about it.

Re: ‘Viking’ was a job, not a matter of heredity: ancient DNA study (2020)

#137

Post by henrikschroder »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #120
troosevelt wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really bother you that people care about their heritage? US culture is a culture that assimilates, people remember where they come from. It's almost mean-spirited that yall fault them for this. Better than forgetting. I remember where my ancestors came from because they came here from somewhere they were not wanted. What I would ask you is why does it irk you, why do you care? Is it some hindance to my cultur…

It's massively irritating because it's the usual US blend of total ignorance and massive arrogance. I used to do re-enactment in the UK, and after almost every show I'd have some idiot wander up and say "I'm a Saxon!" and blather shite at me about what that meant about their identity and culture. If I asked if that meant they weren't American, then obviously they'd react in horror at the suggestion. The idea that my…

The weirdest part is that they stop tracing back the second they hit someone interesting, as if nothing interesting happened before that person. If their great-great-grandfather was Scottish, they then assume everyone before him was 100% super duper Scottish, and that that has conferred "cultural traits" through some weird-ass blood magic or something.

But Europeans are diverse mutts as well.

I'm Swedish. But my last name is 100% German, easily recognisable as a German name, super common. Because my paternal ancestor immigrated from Germany in the 1600's and brought the name with him. My mother's maiden name was Czech, also very easily recognisable as such, and my uncle and my cousins have that name as well.

But I would never in a million years call myself German. I am not German. I am not Czech. My cousins aren't Czech. All of our parents were born in Sweden. All of our grandparents were born in Sweden. The vast majority of our great-grandparents were born in Sweden. We are all 100% Swedish.

The idea that I would call myself German because of my last name is completely ridiculous, but that is exactly what these cosplaying Americans are doing, even though they don't speak German, and I do. My dad speaks fluent German. My maternal grandfather spoke fluent German. I have so much more claim to "German-ness", whatever that is, than these cosplayers, and I wouldn't dream of doing it.

And then they bleat about how their great-great-whtaever was German, and because of that they "feel so connected to the Alps".

Re: ‘Viking’ was a job, not a matter of heredity: ancient DNA study (2020)

#138

Post by IncreasePosts »

Bender wrote: post #114
IncreasePosts wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Africans have the raping gene but Scandinavians do not?

Rape is an act, not a gene. Genes can show where each ethnic groups travel however acts of rape in some countries are often unreported or under-reported for political or religious reasons. Many countries do not track the ethnicity of the attacker. Some cultures permit rape if the victim is not of the same religion but there we would delve into rather taboo topics as rarely discussed without emotion by western culture…

I understand that - I was referring to how OP said "Scandinavians evolved away" from that

Re: ‘Viking’ was a job, not a matter of heredity: ancient DNA study (2020)

#139

Post by marcus_holmes »

henrikschroder wrote: post #137
marcus_holmes wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's massively irritating because it's the usual US blend of total ignorance and massive arrogance. I used to do re-enactment in the UK, and after almost every show I'd have some idiot wander up and say "I'm a Saxon!" and blather shite at me about what that meant about their identity and culture. If I asked if that meant they weren't American, then obviously they'd react in horror at the suggestion. The idea that my…

The weirdest part is that they stop tracing back the second they hit someone interesting, as if nothing interesting happened before that person. If their great-great-grandfather was Scottish, they then assume everyone before him was 100% super duper Scottish, and that that has conferred "cultural traits" through some weird-ass blood magic or something. But Europeans are diverse mutts as well. I'm Swedish. But my last…

haha, great point about the language. An Irish friend of mine would speak Gaelic to any American he met who claimed to be Irish. Obviously none of them spoke the language, and he'd ask why not? Great question.
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