Founder
PHYLOGENY
Analysis in 2011 determined that GD (genetic distance) between the STRs of Rox2 matches formed a smooth bell curve. This indicated that Rox2 was probably a monophyletic clade descended from one man. That conclusion gained credence with subsequent NGS/SNP analysis. Three Rox2 kits took 'Next Generation Sequencing' FGC tests in 2014. Those early pioneers were the first Rox2 matches to get their results included on the Big Tree, thus helping define the size of the phylogenetically equivalent SNP block shared by all Rox2 matches. The FGC SNPs are also present in the more recent higher-resolution Big Y-700 tests (not BigY-500). There was no change in the early phylogeny after Big Y-700 testing. Underneath the Rox2 shared phylogenetically equivalent block a number of more recent SNPs, known at FTDNA's Block Tree as 'Private Variants', have accumulated over time for members of each parallel 'brother' subclade down to the present day.
A similarly extremely shallow phylogenetic structure would occur if for example a man appeared as if 'from nowhere' in 1750 - a man who had no other living male relations. If he then had eight sons who also had lots of children there would probably be many living descendants today. Those of his descendants who took a yDNA test they would find that they all shared SNPs in a block leading to the founder's time of birth in 1750, and there would be few unique Private Variants in evidence in the Big Y tests. That man's descendants would all have very close yDNA matches to each other. The genetic distance (GD) between the cluster's present-day STR haplotypes would be low. If, however, the same haplogroup founder was born four hundred years earlier in 1350 AD, then over half a dozen reliable Private Variant SNPs could have occurred in that time. The STR haplotypes would, on average, have a higher GD too. Rox2 was born c. 700 AD (plus or minus a margin of error), and that is reflected in the larger number of Private Variants and higher GDs evident in the results of the eight parallel branches.
Tracking individual yDNA lines might be imagined like following a long thread of cotton - yDNA is a small part of our overall genetic makeup but it is a real and tangible (but extremely thin) line going back to a distant ancestor. In Rox2's case the thread leads down through more than forty father-to-son generations and a maze of thirteen centuries. A founder appears to have been active in northern Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Of course, the Rox2 yDNA lineage existed before then but the apparent 'bottleneck' indicates that one patriarch produced a large number of descendants relatively recently. Time to most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) estimates suggest that was about 1300 years ago (c. 700 AD). Subclades downstream of Rox2 appear to be the result of an Early Medieval Period dynastic founding event in northern Europe. Many of the 'sons' look to have later produced similar founding events of their own.
Genetic bottlenecks can result from the migration of an individual from 'country A' followed by a founding event (many sons) some distance away, in 'country B'. If the founding event was big enough to produce many surviving male offspring the resulting yDNA cluster is visible in modern hobbyist databases. The long list of SNPs in the shared block and the average number of unique family SNPs after the shared block can give an indication of a clade's time of arrival in country B. Bottlenecks can also occur if yDNA groups are 'pruned' to only one surviving individual who goes on to have many surviving offspring in the same place. Such a scenario might result from a natural or man-made extinction in which all male yDNA relations in a population group - sons, uncles and cousins and very distant cousins - diminish to just one surviving male.
It is likely there was increased mixing of yDNA lineages in the maritime regions of northwest Europe from Late Bronze Age/Iron Age times onwards - La Tène Celts influenced a wide area of the northwest and mingled with British tribes, Belgic tribes and the Jastorf culture who, in turn, later migrated around the North Sea and settled in what is now Britain, Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium and northern France
An event like the 'worst year to be alive' of 536 AD might produce a bottleneck in a lineage if an extended family/tribe was living in a remote place that was severely affected by adverse climactic conditions. The latest ancient ice sample analysis indicates that this sixth century crisis was caused by the eruption of an Icelandic volcano. Scandinavia was particularly badly affected - that time was known as Fimbulwinter. The ability to grow crops at northern latitudes would have been hampered and may have prompted people to move - it may have even been the catalyst that hastened the collapse of the Roman Empire and increased the momentum of the Migration Period and the Scandinavian diaspora during the Viking Age. The agricultural Archaeological evidence described by Gräslund and Price shows that almost 75% of villages were abandoned in parts of Sweden and 'areas of southern Norway show a decrease in formal burials—indicating that haste was required in interments—up to 90-95%.' (link). The Vendel Period in Scandinavia began in about 540 AD. Just after this mini-ice age the Plague of Justinian that started in 541 AD and recurred in waves over the next couple of centuries further reduced the population in Europe.
In another loose analogy Rox2 might be imagined in gardening terms as a long and thin tree trunk that suddenly bursts into eight branches with a very bushy canopy. It is possible that older geographically and genealogically distant 'cousins' have not been picked up yet in the mainly Ireland and British Isles-heavy American hobbyist databases. If the source population that produced the founder died out that location might never be found unless, by extreme good fortune, archaeological remains are found and analysed. Population numbers were comparatively low 1000+ years ago - if Rox2 came from a small family in an isolated or marginal region there might now be no trace of them. If it wasn't for the founding event in the Early Middle Ages Rox2 would not exist.
There are well over one hundred different surnames at 111 STR marker resolution and above that are represented in the cluster. Breaks in the connection between the yDNA line and the ancestral surname can happen, known in DNA genealogy as a 'NPE', or non-paternity event. NPEs are not always the result of illegitimacy and can occur for any number of reasons. See this blog post by Maurice Gleeson on the subject, link. Surnames are not usually a reliable way of tracing back over 1000 years. NPEs that result in surname changes might have occurred at any time in the 900 years since surnames began to be adopted but the inherited yDNA branch structure stays the same.
Geneticist Prof Turi King of Leicester University estimates a 1-2 % chance of a NPE occurring per generation - this figure might be higher or lower for individual subclades. If the surname/branch is around 900 years old, then a 2% NPE rate per generation would result in a cumulative NPE rate of over 60% today - meaning that two thirds of the present-day surnames in the phylogenetic trees could be different to the surnames of the yDNA lineage founders. Given the tiny number of the population who have taken yDNA tests for genealogy it is quite possible that all modern descendants of some subclades now bear different surnames to the medieval founders of those lineages. However, surnames can still give helpful hints about the general geographic locations and origins of EKAs (Earliest Known Ancestors) in parish records, mostly beginning in around the sixteenth century.
The Industrial Revolution of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century saw populations break free of their feudal and local parish ties, resulting in movement around the British Isles to the growing cities and overseas to British colonies. Modern hobbyist DNA databases represent where some of a subclade's descendants were in relatively recent times. The wide distribution of pre-Industrial Revolution, locally-specific surnames suggests that Rox2 expanded quickly across Britain and Ireland - a rapid medieval demographic expansion before the general adoption of surnames. Rox2 families usually have surnames that are familiar in their home regions, be that in rural England, Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man or Sweden. Many surnames in Northern Ireland appear to have earlier Scottish roots. The maps of present day Rox2 surnames reflect emigration patterns in the last few hundred years. Significantly more people in former British colonies around the world have taken yDNA tests for genealogy than those in the 'home' countries themselves.
SPECULATION
As with surname history research it is important to look at the historical context for the relevant eras and geographies. The STR haplotypes and NGS results of all Rox2 matches converge back to one point but the generous margin of error attached to all age estimates must be considered. A 300 year-or-so margin before the current TMRCA estimate takes the time of Rox2's expansion back to the fifth century and the end of Roman rule in Britain and the arrival of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Franks in the Migration Period. 300 years after 700 AD came the Normans, Flemings and Bretons. Ancient DNA from archaeological studies, with accurate chronological dates and burial context for those samples, could provide the more precise timing evidence required.
Nevertheless, if the midway-point of current age estimates for the birth of the Rox2 founder is correct and the distribution pattern on my map is not an artifact of bias in the hobbyist databases, then the rapid expansion of several parallel subclades across the north of Europe might suggest a temporal connection for some branches with the historically-attested westward diaspora of continental northern Europeans in the eighth and ninth centuries. That temporal connection has no specific bearing on where the Rox2 founder originally lived or came from but might fit with the seemingly widespread distribution of the several contemporary descendant lineages. The peoples whose way of life involved moving widely and rapidly in-and-around the British Isles, Isle of Man and Ireland (by boat) in the 700s-900s AD are known as vikings. When written with a lower-case 'v' the term here refers to an occupation rather than to a distinct people. The 'Viking World' covered a large maritime area and was inhabited by a wide range of peoples who interacted within it, as found in Population genomics of the Viking world, Ashot Margaryan et al., 2019 and The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool, Joshcha Gretzinger et al., 2022 (see Medieval DF27 page). If the founder was born over 300 years earlier, as suggested by FTDNA Discover dates, then movement in the late-Iron Age, Roman Period or Migration Period should be considered.
The era between the end of Roman rule and the beginning of the Viking Age saw the development of coastal emporia visited by Frisian traders who acted as middlemen between Britain and the Carolingian empire. Their wealth and that of the coastal monastic communities attracted attention. Northumbria was attacked and Lindisfarne destroyed in 793. The same vikings appear to have raided the coast of Northumbria the following year but were shipwrecked and defeated. Under the year 789 (probably referring to an event in 798, Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba 789-1070) the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records a raid by three ships on Dorset in Wessex, southwestern England as coming from Hordaland. Hordaland is an older name for the region of the Norwegian Westland around modern Bergen. The nature of the first recorded raids in the first late-eighth century suggests that the crews probably came down from the north from Norway via Shetland and Orkney. Another group was gaining influence to the south of Norway in southern Jutland and along the Frisian coast of the southern North Sea. Guthfrith/Gudfred/Gudrød was a powerful king and founder of the trading town of Hedeby who had interaction with the Frankish empire of Charlemagne in the early-800s. He controlled trade in exotic goods and commodities between east and west. By around 850 descendants of Gudfred and his relations had probably moved south to what is now Belgium and the Netherlands in the southern North Sea and some relations moved on west with large fleets to attack Ireland. The group led by kings named Olaf the White and Ivar were known as Dubgaill there. Having once been based in the West Germanic-speaking North Sea region near Francia, they had absorbed the language and culture over at least one generation - something that would help them to exploit events in Northumbria and become established there later on in the 860s. Larger towns like York and Dublin became focal points and commercial bases in the west in the mid-to-late-ninth century.
A key strategic continental maritime base with easier access to southern and eastern Britain was the island of Walcheren and the islands and peninsulas of the Scheldt delta in what is today the southern Netherlands. The area was known as Scaldimariland or ‘land at the mouth of river Scheldt’. Like Orkney in the north of Britain, the area seems to have performed the role of a staging point - a place for gathering resources before heading on. Walcheren had been an embarkation area for sea travel to Britain since Antiquity and was a prosperous trade hub. Numerous defensive late-ninth century circular fortresses or Ringwallburgen were sited along the southern coast of the North Sea with five being found in the Scheldt estuary. Several remain well-preserved and are visible in the landscape today.
Charlemagne (reigned 768-814 and first Emperor of the Romans from 800 AD) left one surviving legitimate son able to inherit his extensive kingdom, Louis the Pious. He and Charlemagne's grandsons by his two other dead sons (Lothar and Pepin) were distracted by civil war while attempting to protect Frankish lands from viking raids. A Danish army led by Harald 'the Younger' and Rorik attacked Frisia in the summer of 837 at the Battle of Walcheren. The brothers belonged to the Scylding dynasty, probably descended from Danish chiefs that ruled lands closest to the Frankish realm at the trading town of Hedeby on the Schlei estuary. Schleswig-Holstein at the base of the Jutland Peninsular was the same area that Angles had left for England centuries before. It is possible that Walcheren island, about 300 miles to the southwest along the coastal route to-and-from England, was previously held by relatives of Harald and Rorik and a Frankish count (Eccihard) in the time of Charlemagne's reign. Halfdan was an envoy sent by King Sigfred to the court of Charlemagne in 782 and may have held the fief of Walcheren. His sons were Anulo, Harald Klak, Reginfrid and Hemming who was a vassal of Charlemagne in 807.
In 841 the Emperor Lothair I granted the isle of Walcheren to Harald and his brother as a fief (beneficium) rewarding him for the attacks he had launched against Lothair's father, Louis the Pious, during the civil wars of the 830s.
Harald Klak and his family, perhaps including Harald, were baptised at Mainz in 826, with Lothair standing as godfather. Harald's son Godfrid Haraldsson and one of his nephews remained at the imperial court even after the elder Harald left. Since Godfrid remained allied with Lothair until the mid-840s, it is possible that Harald was his cousin who remained with Lothair after 826 and began raiding Louis the Pious's Frisian lands in 834. Link
Harald the Younger became an ally of King Lothar and helped stem the raiding, killing and looting on the Frisian coast. In return he gained control of the lucrative trade hub that afforded access to Britain. From his defensive base on Walcheren Harald conquered nearby lands that would later become the Netherlands with his brother Rorik in the ninth century. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 resulted in Frisia south of the river Meuse being ceded to West Francia, the kingdom of Charles the Bald. Charles gave the fief of Walcheren to Godfrid Haraldsson, Harald the Younger's cousin, and the area continued to be a Scaldingi base that would soon launch huge fleets towards Britain and Ireland. Rorik, from his base on the northern Frisian island of Wieringen, took Dorestad in 850, attacked Hedeby in 857 and looted Bremen in 859. In retaliation the Carolingian Emperor took all his possessions in 860. Rorik may have then gone east to found the Rurik dynasty. The Rurikids were leaders of the Kievan Rus and rulers of Russia until 1598 when the crown passed to the Romanovs. The members of the dynasty were extremely widely travelled and always on the move, delegating rule in the different areas to a trusted chief.
Civil war was also breaking out across the North Sea in the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria where rival brothers Ælla and Osberht claimed the crown, link. The region had long been riven by dynastic conflict between native Brittonic and Germanic-speaking North Sea tribes in Bernicia and Deira. Each group had their own internal rivalries and complex alliances had been forged across tribal boundaries and between rival dynasties. There had been a series of murders and depositions in the once-powerful kingdom since the late-eighth century as several royal lines fought between themselves. The Latin Historia de sancto Cuthberto gives the name of the Great Heathen Army that attacked Britain in 865 as Scaldingi three times. The Scyldings/Skjöldungar possibly gained their name from the Scheldt delta - 'the people from the Scheldt' (Lappenberg 1834, p. 112; Steenstrup 1878, pp. 178, 283; Woolf 2007, p. 72). The name of the river in Roman times was Scaldis. An alternative potentially toponymic origin of the name is related to the North Germanic word for shield.
the Swedish place-name Sköldinge (Södermanland) that points to a pre-Viking group-name *Skeldungar, which would be formally cognate with classical Old Icelandic Skjöldunga (Strandberg 2002, p. 676), most likely designated "dwellers by a shield-shaped hill" rather than, as in Olrik's etymology for the legendary Scyldingas, "shield-men" ("warriors"): Scyld Scyldinga: Intercultural innovation at the interface of West and North Germanic, Carl Edlund Anderson, 2016, link
In Northumbria there is a large and distinctive flat shield-shaped hill with a burial mound on its boss-like summit known as Skelder. At 264m high the symmetrical outline of Skelder (probably derived from Old Frisian skeld or Old Norse skjǫldr meaning shield) is visible from land and sea and overlooks the ancient landing point and district of Whitby, on the North Yorkshire coast.
Stories and myths relating to Scyld and Scēaf (only mentioned in English sources) seem to be entangled. Legend tells that the Scyldings/Scaldingi were a royal lineage descended from Scyld, a little boy washed ashore on the eastern coast of the North Sea alone in a boat. William of Malmesbury (c. 1095 – c. 1143) in his early-twelfth century Gesta Regum Anglorum wrote:
.. Sceaf; who, as some affirm, was driven on a certain island in Germany, called Scandza, (of which Jornandes, the historian of the Goths, speaks), a little boy in a skiff, without any attendant, asleep, with a handful of corn at his head, whence he was called Sceaf; and, on account of his singular appearance, being well received by the men of that country, and carefully educated, in his riper age he reigned in a town which was called Slaswic, but at present Haithebi; which country, called old Anglia, whence the Angles came into Britain, is situated between the Saxons and the Goths. Link
It was said that the Scyldings were rulers of Denmark (based at Lejre on the island of Zealand, known as Hleiðargarðr/Hleithargarth in Old Norse) and the Ynglings ruled Sweden. Old English poem Widsith (line 32 regarding the genealogies of English kings) mentions Sceafa. William of Malmesbury wrote that Sceaf was chosen as King of the Angles and reigned from Schleswig. His descendants became known as Scefings, or Scyldings - descendants of Skjöldr/Scyld.
Scyld makes an appearance at the beginning of the famous Old English epic peom Beowulf in a genealogy list that starts with Scyld Scefing and ends at Hrothgar, the current king of the Danes. Scyld had a son named Beowulf, although he is not the same Beowulf who tackled the monster Grendel later in the poem. Beowa, who scholars equate with Scyld's son, was a fertility god associated with barley and agriculture - mirroring his father's handful of grain. The Norse god Balder had similar fertility associations. The term 'corn' refers here to all forms of northern European staple grains, e.g. wheat, rye, oats and barley, not today's maize that originates in America. Corn-god/fertility symbolism appears to be closely connected with the origins of the Scyldings. The early-mid-sixth century was a time when the above mentioned severe climactic conditions were stunting crops and putting communities under great stress. In a period of famine, plague and conflict between the various tribes of Jutland/Denmark/Scania a neutral 'stranger-king' skilled in agriculture could be someone acceptable to all factions.
In the Roman era the wealthy east of England had been the breadbasket of Britain due to its favourable climate, flat fields and fertile soil. That specialist agricultural knowledge probably endured after the departure of the Romans in the late-forth-to-early-fifth century and the arrival of the Angles. The Scyld origin myths tend to suggest that Scyld came from another country and floated ashore from the west. Coastal freelance trading and artisan centres emerged around the North Sea following the Roman withdrawal in the seventh century and an increase in imported pottery and large numbers of Frisian coins appear in the eighth century.
J. R. R. Tolkein added vivid detail in his King Sheave, giving the boy a harp and magical powers through song. In Tolkein's story Sheave brought peace and agricultural prosperity to the homeland of the Langobards and fathered seven sons. In a 1964 letter to one of his readers Tolkein related his interest in 'the traditions of the North Sea concerning the coming of corn and culture heroes, ancestors of kingly lines, in boats (and their departure in funeral ships)', link. Tolkein suggests that Sheave's boat travelled to its destination in Scandinavia from the west. The Old English poem The Seafarer has a strikingly similar theme. Old English folk legends later grew into poems and songs around the figure of John Barleycorn who was associated with agriculture and beer.
The recreated burial-ship at Sutton Hoo. By Gernot Keller www.gernot-keller.com, link
Scyld Scyldinga: Intercultural innovation at the interface of West and North Germanic, Carl Edlund Anderson, 2016 argues that the Syclding legends may have originated in a West Germanic (English/Scandinavian) context to be later exported to Scandinavia where a founding dynasty narrative was created by the writer of Skjoldunga saga, as well as Sven Aggesen and Saxo Grammaticus. The earliest unequivocal use of Skjöldungar in Scandinavia is in Snorra Edda (c. 1220-1230):
the figure of Scyld was likely back-formed by persons familiar with West Germanic naming practices and a Scandinavian form of Scyldingas, perhaps in an Anglo-Scandinavian context in Britain. Subsequently, the figure of Scyld was exported to Scandinavia and, though perhaps absent from autochthonous traditions, incorporated as accepted wisdom into written history and legend. Link
If so, the legend has gone through a confusing and convoluted process before settling to the one known today. The people well placed to be involved in the formation of that process through their intensive interactions with Northumbria were Ivar, Halfdan, Ubba and the Scheldevikingen. The leaders claimed descent from a pan-North Sea dynastic founder and harboured colonial ambitions on the opposite side of the North Sea in Anglian Northumbria. The Angles of Northumbria would naturally be fluent in the West Germanic dynastic terms then absent in Scandinavia. In the ninth century the Northumbrians were familiar with the term Scylding and its meaning and the the maritime Scaldingi had become familiar with the West Germanic/Old English use of -ing as a patronymic/dynastic suffix and were in a position to adopt it and export it back to Scandinavia as North Sea intermediaries. The Icelandic sagas were written by sophisticated Christian authors many hundreds of years after the events in the southern North Sea basin. In this lecture Professor Ronald Hutton suggests that the Icelandic saga-writers may not have fully understood the nuances of the early poetry and were influenced by their understanding of Slavic and Baltic paganism being encountered by contemporary Christian Scandinavian crusaders - beliefs far removed from the West Germanic pagan religion of the eighth and ninth centuries. Temporal and physical distance from the earliest sources may have affected the interpretation.
Ivar, who had been in Ireland since the early-850s, formed a Great Army with a contingent of his brother Ubba's Scaldingi from Frisiand and took control of York in November 866. The vikings in Deira soon found themselves without a leader after Halfdan was expelled in 877 and died in battle at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. The late tenth or eleventh century Historia de Sancto Cuthberto describes the inauguration in 883 of a young Northumbrian Scaldingi relation important in the founding of the Uí Ímair dynasty in Britain/Ireland called Guthred/Guthfrith/Cnut as king of the Northumbrians to replace Halfdan. Guthred's origins in legend are of a slave of noble origins raised in Christian Northumbrian society. He was probably conceived at the time of the invasion of Northumbria in 866 and may have had an English mother. The legend recounted in the Historia de sancto Cuthberto tells that Guthred belonged to 'certain widow from Whittingham'. Whittingham on the River Aln in Northumberland was the site of Northumbrian royal vill where the synod of Ad Tuifyrdi met to appoint Cuthbert to his bishopric in 684.
The ceremony to anoint Guthred was performed on a hill by Christian Northumbrian leaders in the presence of the relics of St Cuthbert and the entire Danish army. The event is notable for the combination of Christian (St Cuthbert's body was present) and pagan Scandinavian ritual (Guthred was given a gold armlet on top of a howe). It suggests that integration, compromise and dialogue was taking place between both sides soon after the invasion. The Northumbrians had realised that the Scaldingi were not going anywhere and both sides sought mutual accommodation. As a Christian Guthred had a foot in both camps. He had probably been raised in North East England and was on good terms with the community of St Cuthbert in North East England, while Halfdan, the former ruler of Deira (North Yorkshire) and pagan brother of Ivar, was not. A similar process of assimilation had happened in the south of England after Alfred the Great defeated and baptized Guthrum, another Scaldingi leader of the Great Army, at the Battle of Edington in 878, link.
Beowulf was probably written in England at about the time of these events plus or minus a century or so. It contains mixed Christian and pagan imagery that would have been familiar to both Northumbrians and Scaldingi. The sea-fond imagery in Scyld's origin story is reflected in the seventh century Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo on the east coast of England. Vendel, Valsgärde and Sutton Hoo were on the edges of Danish-Angle influence at that time - on peripheral frontier zones in the east and the west respectively. They were places that the boats' occupants or their families had sailed to. Their final journeys in treasure-laden boats mirrored that of Scyld, although they were not cast out to sea but ceremonially hauled ashore to be buried in prepared burial mounds. Alex Woolf writes:
In the late sixth and seventh centuries, Uppland and East Anglia lay at opposite ends of a cultural world, which had its centre in Scania (Skåne or the southern-most tip of present Sweden) and the Danish Islands, almost certainly the original homeland of the Germanic-speaking people, and, in precisely this period, the core area of the emerging North-Germanic or Scandinavian dialect grouping. Link
The armoury and boats deposited in the widely-separated grave sites have close similarities, although the grave goods are different. The ship at Sutton Hoo is bigger and the burial goods show more influence from continental European sources. Gold coins from Gaul, a Byzantine hanging bowl and a baptismal spoon were found in the Sutton Hoo grave and the armoury, especially the helmet, is said to be of finer craftsmanship: Sutton Hoo and Sweden Revisited, Alex Woolf, link.
Another ship burial site some distance from Denmark, this time in the north, was at Avaldsnes in Norway (see the Medieval page). Avaldsnes was named after another non-local, King Augvald, who is thought to have lived there at around the same time that King Rædwald was buried in the Sutton Hoo ship burial. The wald name element, meaning ruler, is shared by the two contemporaries. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle later described Rædwald as bretwalda, meaning Britain-ruler. Augvald's name probably means coast-ruler. Storhaug, a later king's ship burial at Avaldsnes dating to the summer of 779, contained grave goods that show Frankish trade and cultural influence. The area would become the site of King Harald Fairhair's royal courts in the late ninth century.
Ship burials were coming to an end in England by the early-seventh century due to the influence of Christianity but similarly lavish ship burials took place elsewhere later in the Viking Age, e.g. the ninth century Oseberg ship in Norway. Perhaps the associated mythology dates back further still to the Bronze Age Atlantic trade network that linked the Mediterranean with the Baltic - to be seen in the prehistoric symbolism depicting stranger-kings and boats in Scandinavian rock art - see the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Medieval DF27 pages.
Scale of the Sutton Hoo ship, early 600s AD, Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company (SHSC), link
Other legends and tales of fate-influenced sea journeys by stranger-kings occur. Andres Siegfried Dobat covered the topic in a 2015 paper Viking stranger-kings: the foreign as a source of power in Viking Age Scandinavia, or, why there was a peacock in the Gokstad ship burial?, link. The Jelling dynasty of Denmark was said to be descended from Harthacnut or Cnut I (Danish: Hardeknud). The 'Hard' element of the name perhaps relates to Hordaland, i.e. the place where the late-eighth century raids on Britain and Ireland originated. He was a semi-legendary king of Denmark said in some pedigrees to be a son of Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, Ivar's brother. There are similarities in his origin story (a slave/foundling alone in the woods) with both Scyld and Guthred of Northumbria's origin legends. Allen Mawer in The Scandinavian Kingdom of Northumbria, 1911-1912, noted that Guthred's story has similarities with the origins of the royal Knýtlinga dynasty ('House of Cnut's Descendants') of Denmark. The Jómsvíkinga saga tells that the baby Knutr (Trælle-knútr) was abandoned in the woods to be found and raised by King Gorm/Guthorm 'the Childless' of Denmark, a vassal of Charlemagne. Knut means 'knot' in Old Norse. In legend the knot was said to have referred to a great cloth knotted to the branches of the tree under which the infant lay. A gold ring was concealed inside a silken ribbon tied around the child's head. The foundling Knut succeeded Gorm and had a son named Gorm hinn riki who was good friends with the semi-mythical viking chieftain Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye and ruled Denmark under Sigurd and his brothers. Gorm was foster father to Sugurd's son Harthacnut who succeeded him as king.
Harthacnut's son was Gorm the Old. Adam of Bremen (died 1081-1085) wrote that 'Hardegon' entered Denmark from Northmannia to become their new king. The Silverdale Hoard, an early tenth century collection of silver jewellery and coins found in the then-Uí Ímair-controlled region of Lancashire, contains a coin bearing the name of Airdeconut a variant of Harthacnut/Hardegon. It is the only piece of evidence for the existence of a ruler of Northumbria by the name of Harthacnut. It is possible that Adam of Bremen's 'Northmannia' refers Northumbria on the western shore of the North Sea, link.
There are hints here and elsewhere in Norse legends that the Scaldingi/Uí Ímair claimed ancestral links through marriage and interaction with Northumbria stretching back long before their invasion in 866. The Sögubrot says that Sigurd Hring (a legendary eighth century king known simply as 'Ring' in that text) lost England when he became too old to defend his kingdom. Then Adalbrikt (Æthelberht) is said to have taken possession of Northumbria, to be succeeded by his sons Ama and Ælla. A supposed Scylding predecessor of Ivar of the Uí Ímair in Britain and Ireland was seventh century king Ivar Vidfamne, son of Halfdan the Valiant and Moald Digra 'the Stout', a noblewoman from northern Britain. He was said to have ruled an empire that took tribute from a wide area that included Northumbria and the southern coasts of the North Sea. Vidfamne means wide-fathoming or wide-grasp. Such family legends might be used to frame, inspire and justify Uí Ímair/Scaldingi dynastic claims towards the same territory two hundred years later. According to the Saga of the Jomsvikings, the sons of Danish king Gorm the Old later claimed the kingdom by inheritance from the sons of Lodbrok. The brothers Knut and Harold invaded Deira (North Yorkshire) and Knut was killed.
One of the sagas of Olaf Tryggvason says that he [Halfdan the Valiant] was married to Moald Digra, the aunt of a certain Kinrik (Cynric) whose son Olaf became tributary ruler in Northumbria under Halfdan's great-great-grandson Sigurd Ring. Sögubrot, a fragmentary saga of some legendary Swedish and Danish kings, mentions that Halfdan was the overlord of Northumbria, as were his descendants Ivar Vidfamne and Harald Wartooth after him. Link
Barbara Kowalik covers the subject of Scylding origins and mythology in the paper The Corn-Hero Myth in Beowulf, The Seafarer, and Tolkein's “King Sheave”, 2016, (pdf) and sums up:
The evident vitality of the corn-hero myth as a generator of poems and stories in Anglo-Saxon England and beyond testifies to an awareness of the importance of the ideas conceptualised in the myth, which may have been especially acute in the social and political context of the late tenth century, when most of the surviving Old English poems were written down, and more broadly from the beginning of viking wars. Seen against that background, the early literary expressions of the myth may be read as supporting, at a deep level of cultural consciousness, a complex policy of peace-making with vikings, which had been embraced already by King Alfred and which involved their conversion into Christianity (cf. Damon 2000: 69-70). The policy has thus been described by Richard Abels: “Alfred learned that to make a secure peace with Vikings they had to cease to be Vikings. To bind them, one had to recreate their leaders in the image of Christian Anglo-Saxon (or Carolingian) territorial rulers. Once defeated, their sea-kings had to be provided with a political ideology that emphasized stability and legitimacy” (1988: 29).
Helmet from Vendel Grave XIV, link
When looking at the North Sea basin one might imagine what is now Belgium, Holland, Germany and Denmark on the east coast and Northumbria, East Anglia and Kent on the west as being like two halves of an ancient North Sea territory with Norway above them and Francia below. Surface currents enabled sea travel between East Anglia on one side of the southern North Sea and the region of the Rhine Delta, and above it, on the other. The North Sea was also connected by busy maritime trade routes that circulated clockwise and anticlockwise around its shores throughout history. The end of Roman rule in Britain in the late-fourth century AD led to a gradual takeover by the Angles who had served as mercenaries in the Roman camps and towns in northern and eastern England in the early-fifth century AD. Then came the extreme weather events of 535-536 AD and the long-lasting effects of the Justinian plague of 541. The Vendel Period began c. 540 AD. Rox2's founding event after its millennia-long bottleneck may have happened around this time (if using FTDNA Discover or YFull TMRCA estimates) or a century-or-two later according to 111T estimates and SNP counting, plus or minus a generous margin of error.
The later Viking Age (late-eighth-to-eleventh centuries AD) might have been fueled by ongoing struggles between descendants of earlier clans with ancient historical claims around the North Sea since Roman times. In Scandinavian tradition all sons, both legitimate and illegitimate, were considered to be the heirs of any of their extended paternal family, a system that could occasionally lead to conflict. The Scaldingi, an extended kin-group that claimed descent from a mythical founder named Scyld, probably came from the same milieu and region of northern Europe that Angles had vacated a few hundred years previously and that Gaulish/Belgic tribes had left 1000 years before them. The scale of the potential for complex circulation and mixing of uniparental DNA markers around the North Sea basin by mobile maritime groups in the Early Middle Ages is clear.
Rox2's age and the seemingly sudden widespread distribution of some branches could potentially point to a connection with the movement of the Uí Ímair dynasty after ninth century interaction in northern Britain and Ireland. The Viking Age spanned approximately 750 AD to 1066 AD. The whole of the south and west of Scotland, most of eastern Ireland and the Isle of Man became one Norse kingdom, the Kingdom of the Isles, in the ninth and tenth centuries. The Isle of Man contains old Manx families with Rox2 yDNA. Professor Ronald Hutton writes:
The British capital of Viking archaeology is, however, the Isle of Man, which remains an independent lordship of the Crown. It has the greatest collection of Scandinavian carved stones outside Scandinavia, and forty burials with goods. In Jurby parish, six of the eight farms had a great burial mound on their land, probably that of the original Viking settler to take it. Link
Orkney and Shetland were annexed by Norway. The north and east of England was settled and ruled by Scandinavians and became known as the Danelaw. The Danelaw's capital York/Jorvik was captured by the clan's figurehead Ivar, founder of the Uí Ímair, in 866 AD. The associated Vale of York Hoard was deposited in a gilt silver pot made in a Carolingian workshop in Northern France in the early-mid-tenth century. Some coins contained mixed pagan and Christian imagery - indicating changes in beliefs at the time, as reflected in the inauguration ceremony of King Guthfred in Northumbria, above.
The hoard included objects from many diverse locations, including Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan, North Africa, Afghanistan, Russia, Ireland, Scandinavia, and continental Europe. Link
The Uí Ímair, meaning descendants or scions of Ivar in Gaelic, were head of a group labelled by the Irish as Dubgaill (dark foreigners). Some of their crews and followers were probably recruited in Northumbria, Frisia and Francia - areas that in the preceding centuries had become settled by Anglo-Saxon tribes. This term differentiates them from an earlier group of vikings known as Finngaill (light foreigners). Dubgaill and Fingaill may not initially have had any meaning to the vikings themselves if it was a name given to them. The meaning of those names to the native Irish and Welsh is the subject of much scholarly debate. See Viking identities in Ireland: it's not all black and white, Clare Downham, 2011, link:
In the mid-1970s Alfred Smyth argued that these terms could be appropriately translated as ‘old’ and ‘new’, in contrast to previous scholarship where the contrasting colours of viking groups had been linked with their physical appearance (for example, hair, weaponry or dress).
Some scholars suggest that dubh and finn might differentiate the groups by political affiliation, not nationality. The two terms might have reflected a split in the Scaldingi themselves - with one family group influenced by the Christian Frankish court and another (Dubgaill or 'dark foreigners') remaining pagan and independent for longer. Alternatively, perhaps the 'old' Finngaill descended from vikings who were previously active in the north, from Norway via Orkney and the Scottish Islands - while Ivar's 'new' Dubgaill were Scaldingi who arrived decades later from the southern North Sea coast of Francia and Frisia. The apparent differentiation might be due to a number of factors. Ivar and his brothers would go on to leave a dynasty that ruled over large parts of northern Britain and Ireland in the ninth and tenth centuries. Their rule ended when rival tribes in the different regions of Britain and Ireland set aside their differences and consolidated into more organised embryonic nation states to counter their influence. The Uí Ímair's presence acted as a catalyist in the early formation of England and Scotland.
The Uí Ímair kingdoms of York and Dublin had close connections and interactions via land routes through Cumbria and Lancashire. Having probably left Dublin in 902 when the Dublin leaders were expelled, Rognvald, a grandson of Ivar, returned to retake the Irish city for the Uí Ímair dynasty. In 918 he and his Hiberno-Norse army fought a battle in North East England against an alliance of Scots and the Anglian Northumbrians of Bernicia at Corbridge on the River Tyne. Rognvald then moved south to take York and become king. By the turn of the tenth century the Dubgail had been in Ireland for at least two generations. Intermarriage is likely to have taken place and alliances formed wherever the Scaldingi settled. Ancient Brittonic post-Roman kindoms like Dalriada, Elmet, Rheged and Gododdin had been influential in the development of Early Medieval Bernicia and Deira, the two kingdoms that would unite to form Northumbria, and their their influence endured into the Anglian period. Hiberno-Norse place names brought to Cumbria and North Yorkshire in the tenth and eleventh centuries indicate that they had absorbed Gaelic vocabulary and culture while in Ireland.
The Irish Annals say that the Dubgaill arrived in Dublin (Átha Cliath) in 851 and took over control of the port from the Fingaill. The two groups would later cooperate - the common descent of their kings was the glue that held the diverse groups together. The 'gaill' element of their names originates from the Irish name for Gauls (Iron Age tribes who lived on the European continent in areas that included France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands) and became a term used for all subsequent foreigners coming to Ireland. Seafaring Belgic tribes were active around the British Isles and Ireland from c. 500 BC. The Uí Ímair and the Dubgaill who arrived over 1000 years later probably set sail from the same region. Ubba 'dux of the Frisians' (aka Rodulf/Rodlaibh?), a brother of Ivar who was also a commander of the Great Heathen Army in Britain, is thought to have sailed from Walcheren. Another brother, Auisle (Auðgísl), also has a name that suggests connections with Frankish or Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The later victories of Alfred the Great against the Danish armies in England, using a similar system of defences and 'burghs' as those successfully used in Flanders, led to the Scaldingi representatives in southern England eventually accepting Christianity. Alfred's determined resistance, along with his alliance with the defeated and converted viking leader Guthrum, baptized as Aethelstan, deflected the attention of other seagoing Sheldt vikings away from Wessex to focus attention towards less well-defended coastal regions of Francia in the late-ninth century. At the same time an accommodation between the Northumbrians and Scandinavian York with the appointment and conversion of Guthred also helped stabilized North East England.
Map above by Max Naylor, Public Domain, link
The port of Quentovic, seventeen miles south of Boulogne, was a key passenger and trading link to Britain for the Frankish empire. It was also probably a safer route for Frankish merchants to trade with Britain during the occupation of Walcheren by vikings. Boulogne had become the headquarters of the Danish Great Army in the 890s AD after the fleets were pushed east out of Brittany. As mentioned, Scheldevikingen from Friesland were raiding in Francia earlier in the ninth century. As the more powerful kingdoms on both sides of the Channel organised countermeasures the sea raiders, possibly including some from Northumbria, Ireland and Scotland, coalesced on the northern and western French coasts. It was a process that led to the foundation of the Duchy of Normandy by Rollo, himself perhaps a member of the Scaldingi, c. 911. Close family ties formed between the nobles of the kingdoms of the southern North Sea and southern Channel coast and there was joint participation between Normandy, Brittany and Flanders in the invasion of England under the leadership of William the Conqueror in 1066. Surnames only became fixed for most people several centuries after the founding of the Rox2 subclade and it is difficult to know what is coincidence and what isn't. However, some surnames match those of families in Flanders and Normandy traditionally associated with the move north from the Norman Court of Henry I in the households of David I:
The friendship between Robert de Brus and David FitzMalcolm (after 1124 King David I of Scotland), who was present in France with King Henry and was granted much of the Cotentin Peninsula, may have commenced at least as early as 1120, at Henry's Court. Link
Modern yDNA distribution maps appear to show a 'hot spot' of DF27 in the area of Old Francia that became the County of Boulogne (896–1501), Picardy and Flanders. The Busby et al. study of yDNA distribution in Europe also found a relatively high frequency of modern P312xL21,U152, most of which will be DF27, in the region of Paris (North Central France where it made up the highest proportion of R1b-P310 at 17.6% ) as it did in Northwest France (20.9%).
The formation of the Scoto-Northumbrian realm of King David I of Scotland in the early twelfth century involved a northward migration of noble families and their retinues and servants from Flanders and Normandy in the household David's wife Queen Maud, Countess of Huntingdon. Maud had Flemish family connections through her mother, Judith of Lens, as well as being descended from the Earls of Northumbria through her father, Waltheof. In the decades either side of the Norman Conquest the Comté de Boulogne in Pas-de-Calais had ties with the east coast of Britain through trade in the lucrative herring fishery. While some Rox2 branches appear to have potentially been present in the British Isles and Ireland since at least the Early Middle Ages with TMRCA estimates centering on the Migration Period, other branches potentially exhibit a period of expansion in northern Britain later, after 1066 AD - a timing that coincides with the arrival of David I, Robert de Brus and their Romance-speaking Boulonnais, Frankish, Flemish, Breton or 'Norman' entourages in the early-twelfth century.
As well as being found in the north of the British Isles and Ireland, some Rox2 matches are also found on the south coast of England. The paper, The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool, Gretzinger et al., 2022 suggests that Frankish aDNA arrived in the Migration Period along with the Angles, Saxons, Frisians and Jutes who carried more northern CNE (Continental Northern European) admixture. The DF27 burials in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries identified from the study mostly appear to be CNE, i.e. migrants from northern continental North Sea countries. See the Medieval DF27 page.
HISTORICAL yDNA
Ancient yDNA from historic remains are increasingly being analysed in archaeological projects, as seen in the following recent examples. The University of Leicester's The King in the Car Park gained worldwide press attention in 2013. The yDNA of the 530-year-old skeleton did not match the yDNA of modern descendants of the Plantagenets, there had been NPEs or 'non-paternity events in the past. As mentioned, NPEs are to be expected in every ancient lineage. Four of the five claimed modern descendants did match each other but they did not match Richard III's remains. Among other projects, Prof Turi King, leader of the University of Leicester team, mentioned on BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific (broadcast 9th July, 2019) that they have a toe bone under analysis that belonged to Robert the Bruce and that they have a male descendant to compare the results with. It was mentioned that there are more studies underway at Leicester but they're unable to elaborate due to confidentiality agreements.
In February 2022 genealogy researchers from the University of Strathclyde announced in the press that they may have identified the yDNA of Robert the Bruce, King of Scots from 1306 to 1329, by testing descendants of Robert Bruce of Clackmannan's sons Robert and Edward. The SNP found was FTB15831. According to the FTDNA Haplotree FTB15831 descends from the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age SNP DF27>ZZ12>Z46512/FTT1>FGC78762, as does Rox2. The two yDNA lines diverge at that early point. The full phylogeny of the purported de Brus yDNA is DF27>ZZ12>Z46512/FTT1>FGC78762>FT3917>Y37728>S7437>S6219>FT378466>FTB15831. The parentage of the Bruces of Clackmannan (descended from Thomas Bruce in the mid- to late-thirteenth century) is not certain, however. Corroboration from comparison with descendants from other branches and archaeological yDNA would confirm the findings. Graham Holton, Principal Tutor on Strathclyde’s Genealogical Studies Postgraduate Programme adds, 'This discovery will also allow the comparison of these results with any Y-DNA which can be extracted from supposed remains of King Robert, and thus confirm the true identity.'
Elsewhere, the mixed bones in caskets at Winchester Cathedral have been analysed and aDNA should be forthcoming. A scientific paper covering the April 2019 UK Channel 4 TV program about the Great Army base at Repton by Catrine L. Jarman et al. was due to be released soon after but has been delayed. A big study of Viking Age remains, Population genomics of the Viking world, Ashot Margaryan et al., was released in July 2019. The Genetic History of France, Aude Saint Pierre et al. was also released in July 2019 but did not include yDNA results. There are rumours (September 2019) that an elite Mycenaean burial is R1b (xZ2103 ). For discussion of ancient DF27 discoveries see Ancient DF27.