Chiara Batini, Chris Tyler-Smith, Sigurd Aase, Hayley Dunn, Walter F. Bodmer, Horolma Pamjav, Maciej Tomaszewski, Marta Pereira Verdugo, Berit Myhre Dupuy, Joanna Story, Jon H. Wetton, Daniel Zadik, Patricia Balaresque, Andreas O. Tillmar, Turi E. King, Anders D. Børglum, Pille Hallast, Gurdeep Matharu Lall, Pragya Vohra, Harald Løvvik, Mark A. Jobling, Tina Baker, Stephen E. Harding, Bruce Winney, Peter de Knijff, Tunde I. Huszar, Maarten Larmuseau, Department of Genetics [Leicester], University of Leicester, Department of Human Genetics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium., Catholic University of Leuven - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), University of Leicester, United Kingdom, Anthropologie Moléculaire et Imagerie de Synthèse (AMIS), Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University of Oxford [Oxford], University of Aarthus, Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), University of Nottingham, UK (UON), Lille Borgenveien 2B, Norwegian institute for public health, Hungarian Institute for Forensic Sciences [Budapest], Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Moléculaire et Imagerie de Synthèse, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France (UMR5288), and Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Moléculaire et Imagerie de Synthèse (UMR5288)
The influence of Viking-Age migrants to the British Isles is obvious in archaeological and place-names evidence, but their demographic impact has been unclear. Autosomal genetic analyses support Norse Viking contributions to parts of Britain, but show no signal corresponding to the Danelaw, the region under Scandinavian administrative control from the ninth to eleventh centuries. Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a1 has been considered as a possible marker for Viking migrations because of its high frequency in peninsular Scandinavia (Norway and Sweden). Here we select ten Y-SNPs to discriminate informatively among hg R1a1 sub-haplogroups in Europe, analyse these in 619 hg R1a1 Y chromosomes including 163 from the British Isles, and also type 23 short-tandem repeats (Y-STRs) to assess internal diversity. We find three specifically Western-European sub-haplogroups, two of which predominate in Norway and Sweden, and are also found in Britain; star-like features in the STR networks of these lineages indicate histories of expansion. We ask whether geographical distributions of hg R1a1 overall, and of the two sub-lineages in particular, correlate with regions of Scandinavian influence within Britain. Neither shows any frequency difference between regions that have higher (≥10%) or lower autosomal contributions from Norway and Sweden, but both are significantly overrepresented in the region corresponding to the Danelaw. These differences between autosomal and Y-chromosomal histories suggest either male-specific contribution, or the influence of patrilocality. Comparison of modern DNA with recently available ancient DNA data supports the interpretation that two sub-lineages of hg R1a1 spread with the Vikings from peninsular Scandinavia. ispartof: European Journal Of Human Genetics vol:29 issue:3 pages:512-523 ispartof: location:England status: published