I1a Not From Scandinavia?

[Eki]

Before year 500, there wasn't any country called Norway. There were small "kingdoms" called Rogaland, Hordaland, Reidgotaland, etc.

http://www.hostkingdom.net/scand.html

In year 200 there could also have been a "kingdom" called Kvenland inhabited by Scandinavian I1a, but today nobody knows where exactly it was or who exactly lived there, just like nobody knows where exactly Reidgotaland was in year 500.

[Eki]

Very much later the Kvens came into the picture when they migrated from northwestern Siberia. A few Kvens from Siberia seems to have migrated into the Saami areas from early on, they have a distinguishable subgroup of hg N3 (H16). But it was in recent history that the greater migration waves of the Kvens came from the east and also brought with them some mtDNA hg D and hg Z to the Saami gene pool. Therefore you find more Kven genes in the areas of their migration path into The Gulf of Bothnia, from Siberia to Karelia and in Finland. And much later in Norway. I find this very interesting, because I also have Kven ancestors.

How do you know the Kvens came from northwestern Siberia or from the east at all? Even Finnish researchers admit they don't know who the Kvens were and where they came from, and after all it should be them who are eager to claim that the Kvens were Finno-Ugric. I know you don't trust Wikipedia, but here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kven#Historical_origin

Historical origin

The land inhabited by the Kvens was historically referred to as Kvenland -- Kainuu or Kainuunmaa in Finnish. Its exact whereabout are uncertain, but was likely around the coastal areas of the Gulf of Bothnia. It is uncertain how much of the inland was considered Kven territory. Possibly, Kvens referred to all Finnish people. (Suomen historia (History of Finland), page 27, Jouko Vahtola, Professor of Finnish and Scandinavian history. ). According to for instance history professors Seppo Zetterberg and Allan Tiitta (Suomi kautta aikojen - Finland Through All Times - 1997) , the Karelians themselves began to call the Kvens by the Finnish language term kainulainen, based on the area they lived on, Kainuu. However, that Kven is equal to the Finnish kainulaiset (or kainuulaiset) and Kvenland to the Finnish Kainuu has not found full etymological acceptance among researchers.

In literature, the first known occurrence of the Kven in the Account of the Viking Othere, a chronicle in the time of King Alfred the Great in the 9th century AD. It is later found in in writings of Adam of Bremen in the 11th century, and in Egils saga from around 1240.

It is possible that some early historians who mentioned the Kvens, such as Muhammad al-Idrisi, confused the Samis with the Kvens. The relationships between the historical Samis, Finns and Kvens are in any case unclear.

Archeologically the Kvens are obscure. Many prehistoric burials are known from the Finnish side of Gulf Of Bothnia to the 8th century, but afterwards only a handful of burials are known. It is so far unclear if the area had a permanent inhabitation of farmers until the 12th century, when settlers from Southwestern Finland were present in the northern riverine valleys.

Before the 8th century there are scarsely any remains of the Kvens. A possible explanation is that "Kvenland" was inhabitated only by hunter-gatherers (with possible Sami affiliation), whose archeological remains are notoriously elusive. Possibly the later were called the Kvens at that time. The hunter-gatherers were apparently called Finns in many contemporary sources, although this name was later transferred to the predominantly farming groups from Southern Finland.

[Eki]

Read the article of Rootsi et.al (2004) it gives more valid information than any Saga on the migrations of genes.

"Phylogeography of Y-Chromosome Haplogroup I Reveals Distinct Domains of Prehistoric Gene Flow in Europe"

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v75n1/41100/41100.web.pdf

Look at the I1a map in the Rootsi et al article and you'll notice that the frequency of I1a (about the same as in central Norway) is identical on both sides of the northern part of Gulf of Bothnia (Österbotten in Finland and Vesterbotten in Sweden). That might imply that Kvenland in fact was located around the coastal areas of the Gulf of Bothnia as Wikipedia says is likely, and that the original Kvens might have been predominantly I1a.

[Wena]

Before year 500, there wasn't any country called Norway. [

In year 200 there could also have been a "kingdom" called Kvenland inhabited by Scandinavian I1a, but today nobody knows where exactly it was or who exactly lived there, just like nobody knows where exactly Reidgotaland was in year 500.

Eki, hg I1a in Scandinavia do not have a German origin except for some immigrants particularly after the Black Death. It is supported that the Saami people are very old in Scandinavia. As you saw from one of my earlier postings in this tread there is a positive correlation of hg I1a and the mtDNA hg U5b (corr 0.6) and hg V (corr. 0.47) at a significance level of 0.999.

Both these mtDNA haplogroups are observed in extreme values in the Saami people, and U5b that correlates the most with yDNA I1a is time estimated to be between 15.000 and 10.000 years old. It means that hg I1a was a haplogroup that came with the Saami ancestors. There is scientific support for this theory, and I do not find any support or not even indications for that these very old post-glacial migrations had nothing to do with Germanic people or “Kvens”(meaning non-Saami people populating Finland today).

The prehistorical yDNA I1a in Scandinavia has nothing to do with Germanic people (i.e. related to people in the areas around present Germany) or Kvens. Immigrations of these groups of people are very recent in comparison, but hg I1a that are found in the Saami seems to have migrated northwards in the postglacial period from Iberia and the Middle eastern near areas.

I did not say that Norway existed as a defined nation before year 500. What I said was that the Saami people originally populated huge areas in today’s Scandinavia and Russia down to Estonia. It might have been their areas that previously were called Kvenland, and even before written history it is known that the Saami were called “Finns” even though they are not the ancestors of all people living in present Finland.

Not even agriculture/ farming started here in Norway before about 1500 years ago when new technologies came into use. It manifested in what we call the Viking age, and because a lot of changes occurred in Scandinavia at this time it might be explained by new immigrations. That is why I believe in the theory of Heyerdahl and Snorre Sturlasson that wrote about the Vikings migrated from areas further east where Odin was king and where the Romans attacked. If this happens to be true we Norwegians and Scandinavians have deep roots in very old cultures, and probably also have matching genes in those areas. How exiting it would be to explore this.

I do not believe that the Vikings and their culture were of German origin, such ideas were a product of Hitler’s fantasy.

Eki wrote: “What I was saying was that Kvens might have been Germanic Scandinavians of haplogroup I1a before Finno-Ugric mostly of hg N3 moved to the same area in the 1800s and became to be known as Kvens. If researchers find that hg I1a is very old in northern and central Scandinavia it supports that theory, not debunk it.”

How do you support these ideas?


Eki wrote: “It could also better explain the sagas of Norwegian kings descending from the kings of Kvenland. Don't you think people are more likely to accept a king of their own tribe (I1a) than from a strange tribe (N3)?”

As I have pointed out, I1a is not only related to Germans. It sounds like navel-gazing (I guess you are German). To repeat, the Saami people have a high frequency of I1a and they are not Germans. And I would not say that N3 is strange, it has a high frequency in Russia, Finland and Scandinavia.

[Wena]

How do you know the Kvens came from northwestern Siberia or from the east at all? Even Finnish researchers admit they don't know who the Kvens were and where they came from, and after all it should be them who are eager to claim that the Kvens were Finno-Ugric. I know you don't trust Wikipedia, but here:

Eki, please do not refer to the Wikipedia. That article is erroneous and skewed, therefore I do not comment on it.

I will try to explain why the Kvens must be of eastern origin.
Take a look at the maps of haplogroup distribution in the following sites:

http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5494/1155?ijkey=x50siGBF3JB0I

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol290/issue5494/images/large/se4308962001.jpeg

There you will se that yDNA hg N could only come from the east to the Scandinavian areas and to Finland. The areas of northwestern Siberia have extreme frequencies of N and N3 (H16). From what I know these areas also match on hg N3 at a nuclear level and differs more from males with hg N further south as for instance on the Balkans.

If you additionally look at the mtDNA hg of northwestern Siberia you will observe that they have observable frequencies of hg D and hg Z, haplogroups that increases in frequencies the further east in Asia you go. These haplogroups are also observed in low frequencies in the Saami population and in Finland. Then when you know that the Saami have specific motifs of hg U5 and hg V, those genes are not found in significant numbers in the populations of north-western Siberia (for instance in the Komid People of Russia). From that you can conclude that the Saami or people from northern Scandinavia have not brought their particular genes to northwestern Siberia, but the people from Siberia have clearly brought some genes to the Saami areas. This fits with registered data, because the Kvens sometimes came with their women, but very often Kven men married with Saami women. Not so often the other way around. In this way the hg U5b1 and hg V frequencies among Saami women have remained very high, while the yDNA haplogroups got more diversified. In addition to Saami I1a and R, the genepool got a very high frequency of hg N3.

While studying genealogy I have observed that people with very eastern sounding names lived in the Gulf of Bothnia in 1700-1600, and some of these families changed those names to more familiar Scandinavian ones during 1700-1800. You cannot always trace these families very far back in Torneå or in Finland.

Additionally, I have first hand knowledge about Kvens and their culture in my family and from the Kven areas in Norway. Their traditions have been very much like Russian ones mixed with culture traditions from Finland. The Saami are reindeer people, and it is also known that many of the Kven settlers had this knowledge and some started herding reindeers. This fits with for instance the Komid people that also are reindeer herders in Siberia. The Komid people and other northwestern Siberian cultures were also farmers, so they intensified agriculture to the Saami areas. Take a look at the following URL’s and you get a glimpse into the Komid culture, it is very familiar:

http://www.erm.ee/html/komid/1793_268.jpg

(click on each picture to magnify)

http://www.erm.ee/html/komid/inim2.html

http://www.erm.ee/html/komid/inimesed.html

http://www.erm.ee/html/komid/index.html

http://www.erm.ee/html/komid/esemed.html (komid farming)

http://www.erm.ee/html/komid/surnud.html

http://www.erm.ee/html/komid/ehitised.html

http://fu.nytud.hu/nepek/nepkom3.htm

http://fga.com.my/missions/Photos/russia-komi.jpg (Komid women)

http://www.tkktk.ee/album/displayima...?album=5&pos=7 (more komid folk)

http://www.uwp.no/Bilder_ravna/id_Komi_Komi_Izhma.asp (komid folklore)


I find this theory very interesting and hopefully the Genographic Project will come up with some answers, with the result that many people would learn even more about their roots. Forget about constructed and erroneous crusader theories.


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[Eki]

Eki, please do not refer to the Wikipedia. That article is erroneous and skewed, therefore I do not comment on it.

I will try to explain why the Kvens must be of eastern origin.
Take a look at the maps of haplogroup distribution in the following sites:

http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5494/1155?ijkey=x50siGBF3JB0I

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol290/issue5494/images/large/se4308962001.jpeg

There you will se that yDNA hg N could only come from the east to the Scandinavian areas and to Finland. The areas of northwestern Siberia have extreme frequencies of N and N3 (H16). From what I know these areas also match on hg N3 at a nuclear level and differs more from males with hg N further south as for instance on the Balkans.

It's not Wikipedia's fault. The article just echos what Finnish researchers think. I haven't heard any researcher say the pre-historic original Kvens (whom Finnish researchers call Kainulaiset) never lived east of western Finland, although nobody knows who they were or where exactly they lived. I think you are talking about the historic Kvens (whom us Finns call Kveenit to distinguish them from Kainulaiset). It's a historically well known fact that the modern Kvens (Kveenit) are descendants of Finnic immigrants in Northern Norway, but the mystery of the ancient Kvens (Kainulaiset) is still unsolved.

You have not answered my question of why you think the ancient Kvens were Siberians of haplogroup N3. Look at the distribution map of hg N and you'll notice the highest frequency of hg N in Finland is not in the northeastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia (the suspected location of the mythical Kvenland or Kainuu) but in central and Northern Finland:

http://www.relativegenetics.com/genomics/images/haploMaps/N_large_RG.jpg

[Stevo]

I would add that it is an error to refer to I1a as "Germanic-Scandinavian" as if Germanic-Scandinavian people were ever a complete Y-DNA monolith.

The genetic strains that went into making up the original early Germanic/Scandinavian peoples were in place by the Middle Stone Age and were not limited to a single Y-DNA haplogroup.

[Wena]

It's not Wikipedia's fault. The article just echos what Finnish researchers think. I haven't heard any researcher say the pre-historic original Kvens (whom Finnish researchers call Kainulaiset) never lived east of western Finland, although nobody knows who they were or where exactly they lived. I think you are talking about the historic Kvens (whom us Finns call Kveenit to distinguish them from Kainulaiset). It's a historically well known fact that the modern Kvens (Kveenit) are descendants of Finnic immigrants in Northern Norway, but the mystery of the ancient Kvens (Kainulaiset) is still unsolved.

Ok Eki, are you are the one that wrote the Kven article in Wikipedia?

I do not think the Kven question is much of a mystery and it is expected that northern and central Finland have very high freq of N3. Northern and central Finland is in the midst of the pathway towards the Gulf of Bothnia where many Kvens settled before some of them migrated to the northwest and to Norway. The problems for some of the Finns are that they will never solve that mystery, because the truth does not fit the Kven crusader histories that some of you have constructed and sustain.

Such grandiosity always baffles me, but I guess this is some kind of a compensating activity, a craving for an unique history and a national identity.

You have not answered my question of why you think the ancient Kvens were Siberians of haplogroup N3. Look at the distribution map of hg N and you'll notice the highest frequency of hg N in Finland is not in the northeastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia (the suspected location of the mythical Kvenland or Kainuu) but in central and Northern Finland:

http://www.relativegenetics.com/geno...N_large_RG.jpg

The map you sent additionally show a high freq of N3 in the areas I already mentioned in north-western Siberia, and other maps and studies show a much higher freq of N3 in north-western Siberia than in Finland or anywhere else.

If you read my text over again you will see that I actually did give you several answers of why I think that the Kvens migrated from northwestern Siberia to Karelia, Finland, Sweden and Norway mainly between 1500 and 1600. Most Kvens are not of ancient origin in Finland and Scandinavia, only a very small fraction of them have very old genetic markers.

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[Eki]

What I said was that the Saami people originally populated huge areas in today’s Scandinavia and Russia down to Estonia.

But they were few and Scandinavia and Finland are big. They could not have been everywhere at the same time. There was room for other people too.

That is why I believe in the theory of Heyerdahl and Snorre Sturlasson that wrote about the Vikings migrated from areas further east where Odin was king and where the Romans attacked.

I believe that theory too. I even thought about the same theory when I was reading Snorri's sagas about Norwegian kings and I haven't heard about Heyerdahl coming up with the same theory.

I do not believe that the Vikings and their culture were of German origin, such ideas were a product of Hitler’s fantasy.

Eki wrote: “What I was saying was that Kvens might have been Germanic Scandinavians of haplogroup I1a before Finno-Ugric mostly of hg N3 moved to the same area in the 1800s and became to be known as Kvens. If researchers find that hg I1a is very old in northern and central Scandinavia it supports that theory, not debunk it.”

Look dictionary for the word "germanic". It doesn't mean only Germans and Germany.

Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Britain are also considered Germanic. In a same way, "Finno-Ugric" doesn't just mean Finland, it also means Estonians, Karelians and Saami. This is what dictionary says about "germanic":

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=germanic

germanic

adj 1: of or relating to the language of Germans; "the Germanic sound shifts" [syn: Germanic] 2: of or pertaining to the ancient Teutons or their languages; "Teutonic peoples such as Germans and Scandinavians and British"; "Germanic mythology" [syn: Teutonic, Germanic] 3: of a more or less German nature; somewhat German; "Germanic peoples"; "his Germanic nature"; "formidable volumes Teutonic in their thoroughness" [syn: German, Germanic, Teutonic] n : a branch of the Indo-European family of languages; members that are spoken currently fall into two major groups: Scandinavian and West Germanic [syn: Germanic, Germanic language]

As I have pointed out, I1a is not only related to Germans. It sounds like navel-gazing (I guess you are German).

No, I'm Finnish but the highest percentage of my close matches in the FtDNA Recent Ancestral Origin database after Finland are from Norway and Iceland, and I want to know why. I think one possibility could be that people from Norway settled in Finland in pre-historic times. Like I wrote before and the haplogroup maps show, the frequency of I1a on the Finnish Österbotten (part of the suspected location of the ancient Kainuu or Kvenland) is higher than elsewhere in Finland, about the same as in central Norway. That's why I think that part of Finland could have been settled by Norwegians in pre-historic times.

To repeat, the Saami people have a high frequency of I1a and they are not Germans. And I would not say that N3 is strange, it has a high frequency in Russia, Finland and Scandinavia.

I never said N3 was rare, almost 70% of Finnish men are N3 but it doesn't make them Finns, Kvens or Saami, neither does I1a. What makes them Finns, Kvens or Saami is the culture they have lived in, and maybe the admixtures of different haplogroups.

What I meant earlier by "strange" was that the I1as and N3s might have been different tribes. So, I1a tribes were maybe familiar to other I1as because they spoke the same or similar language and looked similar. On the other hand N3 tribes may have been "strange" to I1a tribes because they spoke a totally different language and maybe even looked different.

[Eki]

If you read my text over again you will see that I actually did give you several answers of why I think that the Kvens migrated from northwestern Siberia to Karelia, Finland, Sweden and Norway mainly between 1500 and 1600. Most Kvens are not of ancient origin in Finland and Scandinavia, only a very small fraction of them have very old genetic markers.

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You probably don't believe these researchers either, even when they talk about the Asov-project, Thor Heyerdahl and "The Thor Heyerdahl Research Center in England", but they say the Kvens (Kainulaiset) were in Scandinavia and Finland already 10,000 years ago:

http://www.bocksaga.de/kajani_project.htm

5. Kainulaiset - The Kvens
5.1 From Europe’s oldest historic sources we find "The Arctic Treasures" mentioned; like tar, seal-oil, skins of fur and leather, arctic ivory, hunter-falcons, etc. In earlier times these goods - mainly produced in the Barent region - where highly regarded in the Middle and Southern Eurasia. Thus the arctic where seen as rich and resourceful and at the crossroads of our waterways there must have been a highly organized net of production, transport and trade. In the middle of this "inter-continental" network we find a 10.000 year old culture of arctic production and trade called "Kvens" or "Kainuulaiset".

[Eki]

As you saw from one of my earlier postings in this tread there is a positive correlation of hg I1a and the mtDNA hg U5b (corr 0.6) and hg V (corr. 0.47) at a significance level of 0.999.

How about mtDNA hg H1b? FamilyTree DNA says Y-Hg I and mt-Hg H1b go together:

http://www.familytreedna.com/hclade2.html

"H1b is most frequent in Eastern and Northern Europe (like Haplogroup I for the Y-DNA), and if the ancestral site was Iberia gives us an idea of the post Glacial movements beginning, perhaps, 10,000 years ago."

[Noaide]

No, I'm Finnish but the highest percentage of my close matches in the FtDNA Recent Ancestral Origin database after Finland are from Norway and Iceland, and I want to know why. I think one possibility could be that people from Norway settled in Finland in pre-historic times.

If I1a in southern Finland came from the Swedes, the explanation is simple. They are Swedes and thats why they are related. Second explonation is that the actually mutation rate is much slower than what FTDNA suggest to us. I have seen statistical relatedness within 2000 years / 76 generations for 12/12 exact match, then the extentent of relatedness is much further back in time and ancient populations had more time to expand. Third explonation is that your I1a have a common factor, what later become the Saami people. For Saami people the mutation rate might be much slower than for a peasent population because of lower birthrate.

Look at this link, a hunter and gathering population would have few surviving children so their probability of having a mutation would extend much in time with a vertical profile while a peasent population would have many surviving children or higher possibility of mutation events distributed over short time, a more horisontal figure. This way a peasent population would appear more diverse quicker than a hunter and gather population even if the latter is quite old.

http://www.dnaheritage.com/masterclass1.asp

[Eki]

If I1a in southern Finland came from the Swedes, the explanation is simple. They are Swedes and thats why they are related. Second explonation is that the actually mutation rate is much slower than what FTDNA suggest to us. I have seen statistical relatedness within 2000 years / 76 generations for 12/12 exact match, then the extentent of relatedness is much further back in time and ancient populations had more time to expand. Third explonation is that your I1a have a common factor, what later become the Saami people. For Saami people the mutation rate might be much slower than for a peasent population because of lower birthrate.

Of my 11/12 matches, 8 are from Finland, 4 from Norway, 2 from England, 1 from Germany and 1 from Campania in Italy. I have no matches in Sweden. The Italian match is probably explained by that Normans conquered Campania in the 11th century and made it part of the Kingdom of Sicily.

Of my 10/12 matches, 18 are from Finland (7.3% of all Finns tested), 16 are from Norway (4.4% of all Norwegians tested), 8 are from Iceland (6.5% of all Icelandic tested), 5 are from Denmark (2.5% of all Danes tested) and 11 are from Sweden (2.4% of all Swedes tested). So, of all the Scandinavian countries Sweden has the lowest percentage. That's why I think my ancestors didn't spend much time in Sweden.

Other countries I have 10/12 matches include:

- Scotland 25 (0.7%)
- England 25 (0.3%)
- Ireland 13 (0.3%)
- Shetland 3 (2.2%)
- Isle of Man 1 (3.3%)
- France 6 (0.6%)

All those are places that are known to have been visited by Norwegian Vikings, which is one more reason why I believe my ancestor came from Norway.

[Eki]

Here's an other reason: If you compare population of Southern Norway and Finland, you'll notice that the most common haplotype in Southern Norway (my haplotype) is the same as the third most common haplotype in Finland. About 8% of men in Southern Norway have that haplotype and about 3.5% in Finland:

http://www.yhrd.org/index.html

[Eki]

Some researchers think that the ancient Kvens were from central Russia, lived in southern Österbotten and mysteriously disappeared around year 800:

http://sydaby.eget.net/gen/kyro.htm

"We have knowledge of the racial characteristics of the ancient Kyro people because of the discovery of about 100 skeletons that were found in the Levähuhta springs in Storkyro and in Keldomäki in Vörå. How the dead ended up in the springs is unclear, but archaeologists think it probably was a normal burial site.

The skeletons of the ancient Kyro people were small young people, thought to be Lapps. Their skulls were long and narrow, which is a deviation from the form of the Lapps’ heads and their physical structure separates them from the larger build of the Finns and Scandinavians.

One who later researched the skeletons of the ancient Kyro people is Tarja Formisto who received a Doctor’s degree at the University of Stockholm in 1993. She completed her research that compares her own results with information of different people who lived within a radius of 100 kilometers. The results showed that the ancient Kyro people greatly resembled the people who lived in central Russia, around the area of the rivers Volga and Oka. They were of the Fatjanovo culture from the Bronze Age.

The linguists Jorma Koivulehto and Asko Parpola, together with archaeologist Christian Carpelan, found that during the Bronze Age people from the Fatjanovo culture moved to the interior of eastern Finland — a people who talked the Finno-Ugric language, but used many words that belonged to the Aryan language group of the Indo-European language. It is thought that some of these Aryans moved, perhaps as a [blow] to their leadership. It is possible that during the Bronze Age a part of this folk group came to southern Österbotten and lived there in the Iron Age without associating much with other people. This should solve the riddle of the origin of the ancient Kyro people. As far as I know, genealogists do not think so."