In recent years, a range of both scientific and popular publications have explored the extent to which genetics can reveal the input of Scandinavian settlers into the population of north-west England (Bowden et al. 2008; Harding et al. 2010). These genetic results seem exciting but what exactly do they reveal? The limitations of modern population genetics in explaining the past are well known. These studies, for instance, focus on the Y-chromosome, so can only tell us about male input into the population. Even within that restriction, the results tell only a part of the story.
The Y-chromosome represents the direct paternal line, and over a thousand years, this is a very small part of the genetic ancestry of any one individual. Moreover, genetic proportions are not necessarily the same in modern populations as in past ones—some lines die out, others are successful, and some emigrate. And the genetic results can be interpreted in various ways. In theory, they are not incompatible with a situation in which a lot of Vikings passed through the north-west of England and impregnated a lot of women and then left again. If this were the case, the Viking contribution to the heritage of the north-west would be purely genetic, and we would have nothing else to study. However, it was clearly not that simple and there is evidence that the genetic input occurred in the context of other sorts of human interactions. This chapter will therefore explore the linguistic and cultural contexts within which any genetic interactions took place.
The focus of this chapter is on communities of people around the Irish Sea in the Viking Age.* To flesh out the skeletal picture provided by the genetic evidence, the following questions about these communities of people need to be considered:
• What language or languages did they speak?
• What was their family life like?
• What religion did they profess?
These are all relevant to the interpretation of the genetic evidence, since they raise questions that the genetic evidence alone cannot answer.
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