From Susan Grant
Northampton, Massachusetts
You report that a new genetics company based in Iceland hopes to profit by
the genetic homogeneity of the country’s population
(This Week, 3 May, p 12).
You said that almost all Icelanders are descendants of Vikings from Norway.
I admit that the Icelandic population is homogeneous, but its ancestors were
not exclusively—or even mostly—Norwegian. A study done on blood
proteins several years ago showed that, on the contrary, the single group with
the greatest similarity to the Icelanders is the population of Ireland. The
strikingly high rate of red-haired people in Iceland and Ireland provides
another indirect indication of the relationship.
If you read English translations of the old Norse sagas, you notice fairly
frequent references to the Vikings taking slaves from Ireland. In other words,
the kidnapped women and men who went unwillingly to Iceland appear to have made
a bigger contribution to the human population there today than did their
kidnappers. As a third-generation Irish-American biologist, I couldn’t resist
writing to set the record straight!
Advertisement
