We investigate a 2,000-year genetic transect through Scandinavia spanning the Iron Age to the present, based on 48 new and 249 published ancient genomes and genotypes from 16,638 modern individuals. We find regional variation in the timing and magnitude of gene flow from three sources: the eastern Baltic, the British-Irish Isles, and southern Europe. British-Irish ancestry was widespread in Scandinavia from the Viking period, whereas eastern Baltic ancestry is more localized to Gotland and central Sweden. In some regions, a drop in current levels of external ancestry suggests that ancient immigrants contributed proportionately less to the modern Scandinavian gene pool than indicated by the ancestry of genomes from the Viking and Medieval periods. Finally, we show that a north-south genetic cline that characterizes modern Scandinavians is mainly due to the differential levels of Uralic ancestry and that this cline existed in the Viking Age and possibly earlier.
Funding
Science for Life Laboratory
Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
Swedish Research Council project ID 2019-00849_VR
ATLAS (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond)
Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), grant number 16/RC/3948
European Regional Development Fund
FutureNeuro industry partners
History
Comments
The original article is available at https://www.cell.com/
Published Citation
Rodríguez-Varela R. et al. The genetic history of Scandinavia from the Roman Iron Age to the present. Cell. 2023;186(1):32-46.e19