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Interesting read, thanks.

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It’s funny to see an Icelandic author part of a study referring to part of Norway as “isolated”.? Hard to wrap my head around that one… J

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The results show some expected and almost obvious haplogroup sharing between adjacent counties in various parts of Norway, not just in the South----e.g. North and South Trondelag and also between Troms and Finnmark.? You also see elevated sharing between Hordaland (min farslinjer kommer fra der) and Rogaland.? Sure, there’s a lot of sharing seen between the Agder counties, Rogaland and Telemark with little from the others to/from them---they are adjacent areas!

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And that is not very unexpected when you consider Norway is a very long, thin country. ?There’s little significance to look at sharing between that Southern coast and anywhere north of Bergen, frankly, so they might have done better to break up the analysis into 3 sub-regions first.

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Norway’s southern coast, physically, is pretty isolated in several ways.? One of the major centers there (and epicenter of that coast) has the apt-name of ?“Farsund”.? Need we say more?? The authors seem to point to lack of deep fjords in the South without considering that that was not a factor until the 20^th century or so.? The fjords in the South are different, but they are still fjords.? Farsund/Vanse/Lyngdal/Kvinesdal have seen many centuries of seafaring and are also famous for boat building.? I have ancestors from there.

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The authors seem to suggest that lack of genetic sharing with the rest of Norway suggests physical isolation or a shortage of mates leading to inbreeding.? And there was inbreeding (my 2 second-great-grandparents from Farsund/Vanse were first cousins)----but that was not uncommon in many places in Norway and had less to do with “isolation” than lacking a taboo and a great desire to keep farms in the hands of family and friends. ?In time, it had the same effect though---a farm-ownership inheritance system (“Odel” system which the Vikings brought from Scotland---also reflected in the Norwegian tax payment word “Skatt” or Skot which was a “tribute”) that limited outsiders’ ability to come in and just buy many properties.? Many or most such properties across Norway still remain in descendant families’ ownership.

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Genealogists looking at farm ownership history since the 1400’s in the Flesberg/Numedal valley, North of Kongsberg (well outside of the Agder/Rogaland/Telemark zone these authors refer to as isolated) have noted that arranged marriages were the rule there in order to keep farms in the local families. ?My grandmother came from there.

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Dane and German immigrants of course were common from the first days of mining in Southern Norway, particularly in Kongsberg where Kong Christian 4 of Denmark funded the centuries-long mining there for silver and peuter beginning in the late 1500’s.? My mother comes from there (and may be descended from KC4).

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I understand the PCA analysis and the inferences the authors make based on it and the other statistical analyses.? Certainly the South of Norway shows slightly-elevated genetic sharing between adjacent counties and elevated sharing within the counties.? That is not unusual and as noted above is seen in 3 other neighboring county groups elsewhere in Norway from Top to Bottom, West to East and in the case of Troms/Finnmark even in greater amounts.

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I have ancestors from all of these areas: Telemark, Aust- and Vest-Agder, Rogaland, Hedmark, Buskerud, Troms and Trondelag.? My 1^st great-grandmother (from Farsund and whose parents were cousins) did not languish in Farsund---she married the son of a miner/farmer in Kongsberg and made a life there.

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Finally, this study seems to reach too far to me.? I mean, being they’re basing it on DNA test of ‘unrelated’ Norwegians (how did they determine that?), and all of the 19 county associations that they make are based on the “postcode” from the mailed personal sample.? They also note that there was amplified sample bias from SE Norway (Oslo area) and undersampling in SFJ and the far North.? Did they have a DNA base set for each of the 19 counties that was used to correlate samples with?? No.? They inferred it based on assumptions that DNA from those post-marked areas somehow had multi-decade or multi-century meaning and association with that area.

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So, yes, as the name “Farsund” suggests, that Southern coast is considered “far” from where most human activities in Norway tended to be.? But that area has a rich nautical history and folks living there were key in the early 1800’s in supporting Denmark in Napoleon’s war.? Raids of English ships from Farsund and other locales there were not uncommon.? It may have been considered ‘isolated’ by some, but the folks there had some means.

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Anyway, thanks for sharing.

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-MT

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From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of A321son via groups.io
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2024 5:45 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [R1b-U106] VK389 and Kincaid DNA as evidence of Vikings on Clyde river, Scotland?

I just wanted to note here the following point. I wish to refer to the 17 May 2021 study: Mattingsdal, M., Ebenesersdóttir, S.S., Moore, K.H.S. et al. The genetic structure of Norway. Eur J Hum Genet 29, 1710–1718 (2021). . The summary of findings points out: "The main finding of this study is that despite Norway’s long maritime history and as a former Danish territory, the region closest to mainland Europe in the south appears to have been an isolated region in Norway, highlighting the open sea as a barrier to gene flow into Norway." Under discussion it adds: "Our results further support the divergence, isolation, and homogeneity in the southern counties of Norway (Rogaland, Agder, and Telemark). The isolation is exemplified by the observation that Oslo has a relatively similar trend in historical effective population size to that of the general British population, while Rogaland had a similar historical profile to the Orkney Islands [43]. Further, the counties of Rogaland and Vest-Agder display elevated levels of within-county haplotype sharing (~13–14?cM), suggesting isolation and inbreeding (Fig. 2), as well as increased homozygosity (Fig. 3) and small Ne (Table 1)." So this is in line with my recent point that the snp gaps with VK389 and Kincaids seem to point to isolation. Genetically, Telemark (which is the source of Skien's VK389) has the most in common (IBD - Identical by descent) with Aust-Agder and Vest-Agder to its immediate southwest at the southernmost tip of Norway. This is proven to be a very isolated population. This certainly is a prime candidate for being the source population for Kincaids - albeit this is tempered by VK389 being a collateral line to the Kincaids. The plotting of the dataset in McColl et al's "Steppe Ancestry in western Eurasia and the spread of the Germanic Languages" show Denmark and Frisia reasonably well sampled. Yet the southern tip of Norway and the Clyde valley area of Scotland are still not well represented. I think there could be a connection.

Just thought I'd note this study's finding. Thanks for the comments here.