A Brief History
On September 21, 1170, invading Normans, Vikings that had settled in France, captured the Kingdom of Dublin and established their own Irish kingdom replacing a previous Viking kingdom in Ireland from the 9th Century called Dyflin.
Digging Deeper
Vikings, the premier seafarers of the 8th through the 11th Centuries, spread their DNA far and wide in their travels, both in trade and in conquest. Many Europeans today have genes passed down from the Vikings, people from modern Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, countries that today have a combined population of only around 22 million.
Places that have Viking heritage today include Scandinavia, Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, the Baltic States, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Iceland, Greenland, Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, and North Africa!
Vikings even traveled to North America, but it is unknown if they left any of their genetic influence. Of course, there are the Minnesota Vikings and the Cleveland State University Vikings!
Question for students (and subscribers): Do you have Viking heritage? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Haliday, Charles. The Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin. Irish University Press, 1969.
Herman, Arthur. The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World. Mariner Books, 2021.
The featured image in this article, a map by Gange Hrolfr of areas periodically ruled or conquered by Norway or Norwegians, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
