Ydna in the Nordic countries.

[Eki]

It says here that the distribution of the ring button swords is similar to the route of the Heruls:

http://www.gedevasen.dk/heruleng.html

[QUOTE]The distribution of the double-edged ring button sword in Europe is similar to the route of the Heruls and the people mentioned in Nibelungenlied (note 2.2.9) and the southeastern England. In Sutton Hoo there was also a ring button on the shield. In Scandinavia they are found in Sealand, Blekinge, Goetaland, Svealand, Viken (Oslo), Gotland and the south-western Finland from 500-750. From an earlier phase around 450-500 another ring button type of pure gold is found in Gudme, Norway and the northern part of the Frankish kingdom, which was just then under formation (The four in Gudme were without sword

[Eki]

Here are some distribution maps of ring button swords:

http://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/volltexte/4109/pdf/Steuer_Helm_und_Ringschwert.pdf

[Eki]

I notice that ring button swords in Britain have only been found in southeastern part of the country.

I found interesting this piece of information that says that in 448 Hengist kills Finn, king of the Frisians and afterwards leads his people to Britain to conquer Kent:

http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsEurope/ScandinaviaDenmark.htm

c.448

Hn�f, perhaps only a sub-king of the Danes, winters with his sister in Frisia. Hildeburh is married to Finn, king of the Frisians. During fighting that appears to be sparked by a feud between the Jutish allies on each side, Hn�f is killed at the 'Fight at Finnesburg'. Finn is subsequently killed by Hengist, Hn�f's Anglian comrade in arms. Soon afterwards, Hengist leads his people to Britain where he begins the conquest of Kent.

Kent (previously Cantware) is in southeastern Britain near the places where they have found ring button swords:

http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsBritain/EnglandKent.htm

http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/EnglandMapAD700.htm

[Eki]

According to a study by Cavalli-Sforza et al in 1994, Finns are genetically closest to Belgians:

http://www.mankindquarterly.org/samples/niskanenbalticcorrected.pdf

Based on the FST genetic distances presented by
Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994:270), the Finns are genetically a little
closer to the Belgians (FST= 63), Germans (FST= 77), and
Austrians (FST= 77) than to the Swedes (FST= 82).[/b] This
difference is a result of Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994) using a
different genetic distance measure and computing distances
using a data set including missing values.

I think the distribution of button ring swords supports this. There seems to be a concentration of ring button swords around Belgium and Friesland as well as in southwestern Finland:

[Deirwha]

What is the "anglian" haplogroup and subglade?

Is the haplogroup in the I series, the R series, a combination of the two, and which was Hengist? Do we know? Have educated guesses?

[Eki]

Is the haplogroup in the I series, the R series, a combination of the two, and which was Hengist? Do we know? Have educated guesses?

Since Denmark is said to have mainly two tribes, the Danes and the Jutes, and two main Y-haplogroups, R1b and I1, I think one tribe might have been mainly R1b and the other mainly I1.

Since some provinces in western Finland have about 50% I1 and hardly any R1b, and sagas tell about a king of Finland named Fornjot, who has usually been interpeted to mean an ancient giant but could also mean an ancient Jute, I'd guess the Jutes were mainly I1 and the Danes mainly R1b. Finnish folklore also know mystical people called Jotuni or Jatuli, who are also often considered as giants.

However, it seems that people might have mixed Jutes, Frisians and giants:

http://www.heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-notes.html

The texts read eotenas which could be either giants or Jutes (or Frisians). The genitive plural of both eoten/eoteon (giant) and Eotan (Jutes) is identical ( eotena ). [The dative plural is not: eotenum (e.g. l. 1145) means 'giants'.] This has caused various critics to interpret episodes involving the 'eotenas' in many different ways. Some read 'giants', some 'Jutes', some 'Frisians' (Bugge and others have suggested that Jutes and Frisians were the same people).

Hengest appears to be somekind of flip-flopper, and it's difficult to say whether he was a Jute, Dane, Half-Dane or a Half-Jute:

http://www.heorot.dk/finnsburh-i.html

Hengest--who seems, since he takes up de facto leadership of the Danes, to be a Dane himself, though Hengest (and his brother Horsa) are recorded as the leaders of the Jutish settlement of Kent-

[Eki]

I put on a map all my British I1-matches from YSearch who had tested at least 67 markers and indicated the precise location of their ancestor. They fell mainly in eastern England:



There could be some truth in the claim that the English are "Germans" and the Welsh are "real Britons"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=j617mImHVvk

[Eki]

For map comparision, here's a map of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom around year 900:

http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=map&id=submap900

[Eki]

I'm currently reading "Britain in the Middle Ages" by Francis Pryor. He writes that trading patterns in the 7th century were different in Western Britain than in Eastern Britain:

"Professor Charles Thomas has suggested that the trade between the Mediterranean region and his site at Tingatel Castle in north Cornwall would have involved ships which loaded up at various Mediterranean ports and then headed towards Britain, probably via the Spanish and Portuguese coast. Maybe this happened every few years, we cannot tell, but it was never the constant and increasingly active, coin-based trading network that we now realise existed around the southern North Sea basin from at least the later seventh century. That was something altogether different, and both north-western Britain and Ireland lay outside it".

Maybe this also affected DNA and caused genetic differences between western and eastern British Isles?

[PDHOTLEN]

Sykes' book too

I recently looked at Bryan Sykes book "Saxons, Vikings, and Celts" again. He gives an interesting account of early British history and mythology. His description of the "Danelaw" matches the map from the above message, where there was a truce between invader Danes and the Saxons.

It looks like haplogroup I (Oisin) was the earliest Y-DNA haplogroup in Ireland, and i would guess in the British Isles in general. They were the husbands of mtHapogroup U5, by the looks of it.

[Eki]

This says that "giants", such as Grendel in Beowulf may have been figuratively "cruel, untrustworthy men":

http://www.heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-notes.html

The poet's song of Finn occurs immediately Beowulf has slain Grendel, the eotan who has been tormenting the Danes, as Stuhmiller observes '[ eoten ] is never used again because it fulfills its intended function in the Finn Episode; its conspicuous absence from the remainder of the poem only serves to underscore the effect....[i]t is no coincidence that the unnamed scop [poet], who might be thought of as the voice of Heorot itself, sings of the rouble caused by the Eotan, who are formidable and bloodthirsty opponents, regardless of their exact racial identity. The message is clear: the Geats may have vanquished this particular eotena , but the Danes have eradicated whole hosts of them in the past' (11). This is to say that the 'Eotans' here are literally 'giants', but figuratively cruel, untrustworthy men;

[Eki]

The Heruli were apparently at least cruel:

http://www.gedevasen.dk/heruleng.html

Up to the sixth century the Heruls were regarded as one of the most primitive Germanic tribes offering human beings to their "host of gods"

[Eki]

Procopius wrote in the 6th century that some Heruli settled near Danes and Geats in southern Sweden around Blekinge, but the Danes and and the Geats expelled them later:

http://www.gedevasen.dk/heruleng.html

The Western Gauts on their side, however, appear to have had troubles already with the Eastgermanic "forerunners" (Finnestorp and Vennebo). When the Heruls took up their old way of living (plundering and tribute) - which they had to do when living in Smaaland/Blekinge - they provoked the Danes to expell them, and the Gauts would probably support the Danes.

[Eki]

If the Heruli were expelled from Blekinge, where did they go? To Finland? The most common I1-halotype in Finland, I1-Bothnia, resembles the most common I1-haplotype in Blekinge:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gallgaedhil/haplo_i1a_part_1.htm

I1a Haplotype #4
The top frequencies for this haplotype are overwhelmingly Scandinavian.

19 389i 389ii 390 391 392 393 385a 385b
14 12 28 23 10 11 13 14 14

Geographical Locale %
Blekinge, Sweden 9.52
Finland 8.52
Central Norway 8.33
Uppsala, Sweden 7.02

[Eki]

Icelandic Barthi Guthmundsson believed that some of the first settlers in Iceland were Heruli who had come from Denmark and settled in Norway:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2854819

Interestingly Fornjot, king of Finland and Kvenland, is considered the terminal ancestor of many modern Icelandic families:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fornjotr

Fornjot is also, following a particular legendary genealogical tradition, the first-known direct paternal ancestor of William I of England and also through other supposed descendants a terminal ancestor of ascending branches of many European noble families and modern Icelandic families.