Monday 2 July 2012: Pict Or Viking?

I was hoping that my DNA result would confirm what I had hoped to be -a Viking.

With a fair skin, blond hair (once upon a time!) blue eyes, and carrying a red hair recessive gene which gave two daughters red hair, and feeling in tune with Northern lands, there was no reason to think otherwise.

However in the event this Viking or Pict question was no more than an advertising gimmick and now having my results confuses the issue more than a little.

Perhaps if I take time to read the accompanying book I will feel clearer about who I really am; nothing out of the ordinary it would seem at first sight, unlike an Edinburgh lady whom I know and who was a pupil below me at school, who it turns out has the same DNA markers as the Queen of Sheba.

My ancestors seem to have been the hardy, vigorous and restless women who trudged north into Europe after the last ice age from somewhere between Iran and Mongolia, where It seems we ladies originated about 40,000BC.

Needless to say my DNA marker is the most common in Europe, but is also found in Asia and Northern India. So much for being special.

The only grain of comfort is that some of my DNA marker subgroup walked north through what is now Germany, and it is significantly present in Norway.

Perhaps this means I am a Viking after all, descended from one who sailed over the North Sea and was blown south of Shetland and Orkney to Aberdeenshire to produce in the last century or two, a line of matriarchal women who I know as my great grandmothers- down to earth, hard working and forceful, just like those women 42,000 years ago.

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