Viking link remains in Orcadians

A quarter of men in Orkney are direct descendants of the vikings, a new study has revealed.

Carried out by Orkney-born geneticist Dr Jim Wilson, chief scientist at BritainsDNA, the research was commissioned for the February launch of the US television show Vikings, and shows that almost one million Brits are of Scandinavian descent.

The study compared the Y chromosome markers — a piece of DNA inherited from father to son — of over 3,500 UK men to six DNA patterns that are rarely found outside of Scandinavia and are associated with the Norse vikings.

“Despite arriving well over 1,000 years ago the Viking legacy still remains strong in Britain and Ireland,” said Dr Wilson, who is also a research fellow at the Centre for Population Health Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.