 What did Vikings look like and what is the genetic history of Vikings? The Vikings are traditionally portrayed as being tall, blonde and strong. But how close to the truth is this? An Arab author described the Vikings as being as tall as date palms and having reddish skin. He also described them as having perfect physiques. So what colour hair did Vikings have? Well on Western and Scandinavia around Denmark region today is considered that those Vikings, those Danish Vikings probably had red hair for most part. In other parts of Scandinavia such as Sweden however, blonde seemed to be more common. A 2020 study however challenged the notion that the Vikings had blonde hair. They noted that the Vikings often had children with other people from other lands and that the Vikings actually had dark hair in large part as opposed to the blonde commonly associated with the Vikings. How tall were Vikings? Well although this is a simple question that the answer is annoyingly far from simple. Actually this morning I was trying to figure out exactly how tall Vikings were. There's various theories and there's various estimations and getting a precise answer is quite difficult. In general they seem to have been around for males anyway. Five foot six, five foot seven and for females five foot one on average I would say. That's the general averages I saw some. Maybe obviously a little taller the averages, maybe five foot eight or so. But certainly not massive giants that are often depicted in TV series etc. While the Vikings were selected for their height it's hard to say but certainly from the kind of studies that they've done on skeletons etc. It seems to be that general range. Compared to the rest of Europe that seems to be somewhat average. Vikings were potentially slightly taller than other Europeans but there's so many factors that went into it because we know obviously there's genetic component to height but access to nutrition even today is still a major determinant of height. So they were relatively tall but nothing no giants but I'm sure there would have been giant Vikings amongst them because this is obviously just an average around five foot six, five foot seven for males and around five foot one for females. It is thought on the Viking age that male and female faces were much more similar in Scandinavia than the are today. Female Viking faces were considered to be much more masculine than today with more prominent brow ridges. Male faces on the other hand were more feminine than the are today with less pronounced jaws and brow ridges. Because of the similarity it's actually extremely difficult to determine whether a Viking was male or female by looking at the skull alone. Other factors, other markers need to be taken into consideration like the size or the width of the pelvis for instance. Fears were very common amongst Viking men and Viking men also had long hair around shoulder length with slaves for the most part been known the ones who had short hair. If we look at the body composition of Vikings most research suggests that they were more muscular than they are today mainly due to the fact of the physical environment they grew up in and all the hard labour and hard physical work they had to do. It wasn't all pretty however from around 500 skeletons found in Denmark Danish Vikings showed signs of tooth problems and aching joints. So if you're wondering where I am today and obviously it's absolutely stunning it's just Caron Valley and one of the benefits of staying in Scotland is that there's such beauty just on your doorstep. This is about five to ten minutes from where I live just in the car or maybe 20 minutes in the car this spot. But if you're around this area Caron Valley is definitely worth coming to and hope you hope it transfers just how beautiful it is and it's quite still as well which is nice. Sometimes when you're filming near water the water can completely destroy the audio if it's you know if it's kind of running quite quickly but yeah beautiful. So the Viking Age obviously was an increase of people goods movement in general as the Vikings raided other lands took goods back took people back took slaves back. So what impact did the Viking Age have on the genetics of Scandinavia itself? Well I studied publishing self just last month and showed that there actually was a somewhat sizable increase in Baltic and Eastern Baltic and also British Irish ancestry into Scandinavia during the Viking Age. This is obviously for two reasons. Firstly many slaves were forced to come back to Scandinavia by the Vikings but secondly many people were particularly probably from Britain and Ireland. Many Christian monks went on missionaries to Scandinavia during the Viking Age. They more willfully ended up in Scandinavia. Another interesting aspect when you look at the genetic history of Vikings is that the Viking the Viking people and Viking essentially just meant Scandinavians who would go on voyages to raid lands overseas to raid and pillage overseas to go Viking. Obviously Vikings themselves a bit as a word we use today. One interesting aspect is Vikings lived in the coastal areas of Scandinavia and genetic studies have shown that the Viking population is actually genetically quite distinct or was genetically distinct from the mainland peasant population of Scandinavia at that time. So the Vikings because they lived in coastal areas and because obviously the trade and the pillaging and the voyages overseas meant that there was so much intermingling between Vikings and other people. And Vikings often had children with other people from other lands. So the genetic diversity of Vikings compared to the mainland peasant population of Scandinavia was quite distinct and quite large just given the genetic variation of Vikings compared to the Scandinavian peasants of the mainland which is one interesting feature. A 2020 study on the genetics of the Viking Age found that many Vikings of Scandinavia had relatively similar genetics to the Iron Age population of Scandinavia. However there was a larger than anticipated influence from southern and eastern European populations. This 2020 study also found that Danish like ancestry is pretty common or more common in England. Swedish like ancestry is more common to the east in the cannibalctic area and Norwegian like ancestry is common in Ireland, Iceland and Greenland. One problem when looking at the impact that Danish Vikings had on other territories particularly when we look at the British Isles in England or what we call England today and there's a problem many in the comments have previously flagged. It's extremely difficult to distinguish the presence of Viking genetics from Denmark and Anglo-Saxon genetics from Denmark with many Anglo-Saxons coming from Denmark. So this often creates confusion and noise in the samples if you see Danish genetics in someone's genetic code from say England, England today. Could that be from the Anglo-Saxons or the Vikings, a Danish Viking? It's very hard to distinguish between the two. Another interesting aspect of the Vikings that this 2020 study touched on is that Vikings potentially went Viking together, went on raids together with their close kin, with relatives, with family members. A Viking burial in Estonia made up of around 41 Swedish Vikings found at four Vikings buried side by side in this burial where brothers direct kin and another one was related. This obviously is just one instance and this is just one burial ground. Was it just coincidental that brothers were found side by side or does it imply that it was commonplace in the Viking Age for Vikings to go on raids with their close kin, with brothers, with family members and this is simply a reflection of this. This irrational argument would have been that chiefs in the Viking Age would have selected the strongest, more fierce warriors to go on raids with them. But this may not be the case. The Vikings obviously had such a profound legacy in so many aspects of our world today. Even so many words in the English language we get derived are derived from Viking words, from old Norse words. The Vikings have obviously captured many people's imaginations, including myself. The exact look and genetics of the Vikings is obviously hard to say 100%. But hopefully this video gave you a brief oversight of some of the main theories. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below however. What is your thoughts on the genetic history of the Vikings, on how the Vikings looked, how tall they are, because that was quite hard to find any sort of definitive information on. And just any other general thoughts on the Vikings, and any future videos or angles you would like to see on the Vikings in particular. Thanks for watching. If you would like to support this work, through Patreon, buymeacoffee.com, or donate through PayPal, all the links will be in the description below. You can also obviously tell your friends and family about this channel, share the channel on social media, and really try and raise awareness about this channel. Please subscribe and hit the bell, as usual. But thanks again for watching, and I'll see you next time.