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Want To Find Out If Your English Ancestors Were Vikings?
By Rick Roberts, Biography & Archived Articles While taking a break this morning and browsing online university library catalogues, I came across an interesting project that I think readers will want to know about. The project is a scientific effort to define and quantify the genetic makeup of those descended from northern England families, especially as it relates to Viking occupation and remaining traces of Viking genes. The web site of the University of Leicester explains it far better than I can: The North of England Study
Background to the study:"This Leverhulme Trust/Wellcome Trust-funded study is being carried out by Dr Turi King in collaboration with Professor Mark Jobling at the University of Leicester as part of the Impact of Diasporas on the Making of Britain project. Surnames are passed down from fathers to sons, and in Britain, this has been going on since heritable surnames were first established some 700 years ago. We have studied the link between DNA and surnames, focusing on the Y chromosome, part of our DNA that is, like the surname, passed down the paternal line. In this project we want to learn about British history by studying the Y chromosomes of men with old local surnames, to provide us with a link to the DNA of people in the past. We are particularly interested in the history of the Vikings. We know that these people left a lasting legacy on our language, landscape and place-names. But did they leave any genetic trace in today's population? To answer this question, we wish to obtain DNA samples from men with old local surnames from the north of England. Men carrying such names are very likely to have inherited them from ancestors who lived in the area only a few generations after the Vikings settled in the region. We have nearly completed recruitment for this study, but still require participants bearing one of the eligible surnames listed below. DNA donation is simply via a saliva sample, and volunteers will receive a description of their own Y-chromosome type when the work is completed in 2013. If you are a man carrying one of these surnames, your father's father was born in the north of England (Cheshire, Cumbria, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham or Northumberland) and you would like to take part in the study, please read on..... How to take part in the study" Maybe you have Viking roots that you don't know about? Even if you have no interest in participating in the study, you will probably enjoy checking out the Surname list on the University of Leicester web site. Click here to read about the North England Study, and check out the surname list More resources from GlobalGenealogy.com:
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