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From: "Ken Nordtvedt" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Vikings and Gaels
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2006 17:50:20 -0700
References: <182222.48659.qm@web50715.mail.yahoo.com>


From: "David Faux" <>

Permit me to quote from Sykes book on p. 196. "it is hard to account for
the Gaelic origins of a third of Icelandic Y-chromosomes without
contemplating that these men were taken to Iceland as slaves."

> I still think that there are other interpretations that could explain the
> data, or that the true answer lies in some sort of blended theory, but the
> fact is that if you disagreed with me when I posted on the subject some
> time ago, you are also disagreeing with Dr. Sykes and his team at Oxford.

Wow, are we supposed to fall to our knees before the book/tv celeb? The
Gaelic genes in Iceland has been well known for some time and mentioned in a
number of papers. This is certainly not original with Sykes.

Who has challenged or disagreed with the concept that the settlers who went
to Iceland brought a good number of folks of British Isles roots with them?
I actually thought that was common knowledge by now. The Icelandic sagas
mention many trips of their early characters back to the British Isles
rather than Norway, and I suspect a good fraction of the Icelandic founders
actually left a British Isles anchorage on the trip to Iceland rather than a
Norwegian port, so most of the Celts who got to Iceland may not have ever
put a foot on the Norwegian mainland.

I know there is some NW Irish R1b (M222+) in Iceland, I saw it in one of the
databases; I'll look again in the Dupuy collection of Norwegian haplotypes
since at the moment I don't remember seeing any there.

Ken


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