Looks like they will try to identify the bones of Cnut the Great, king of Denmark, England, Norway through DNA. His bones are part of a jumble held at Winchester Cathedral. If they can identify them, it will be because he has the same mtDNA as his sister's son Sweyn II Estridson, King of Denmark.
DNA and the old bones of Cnut the Great
http://www.medievalhistories.com/dna-old-bones-cnut-great/
wow; that is interesting
sweyn 11 is a great grandfathers
and; the father of Cnut
is a 33rd great grandfather
Harald "Blue Tooth", king of Denmark
I see some of your Scandinavians Candance
Candace Kitten Schermerhorn is Ulf Ingvar Göte Martinsson's 18th cousin thrice removed!
http://www.geni.com/path/Ulf-Martinsson+is+related+to+Candace-Scher...
Åke Pik is my 18th great grandfather.
Candace Kitten Schermerhorn is Åke Pik's 21st great granddaughter.
Håvard, there are good discussions about this:
DNA testing - what company?
http://www.geni.com/discussions/112057
Most bang for the DNA buck
http://www.geni.com/discussions/145023
Lots of reasons ;)
Here are a few examples from my research.
One of my great grandmothers was illegitimate. Family tradition said one thing about her father, and I even found evidence in paper records. I had a different theory but I couldn't prove it. Just a few months ago I matched someone else on an autosomal test and proved that my theory was right and family tradition was wrong. It was probably the most spectacular day in my 47 years of doing genealogy.
My father and grandfather had ideas about why our male line shown by records was wrong. They thought we were either Durands or Hamiltons, not Howerys. I matched a very, very distant Howery cousin on a yDNA test and proved that the paper trail is right back to the 1500s.
I'm not sure about the ancestry of my most distant female line ancestor. There are other families in the same area with the same mtDNA. That shows they are probably relatives in the female line. Knowing that we might be looking for a common ancestor in the same period and the same place helps us all focus our research.
There are many stories like these. The basic idea is that people get tested to see what they might find.
Åke Pik is your 18th great grandfather.
Sweyn II Estridsen Ulfsen of Denmark is your 23rd great grandfather.
Harald "Blåtand" Gormsson is your 26th great grandfather.
Cnut the Great, king of Denmark, England, Norway is your 25th great uncle.
his father
Svend I Haraldsen «Forkbeard» Tveskæg is your 25th great grandfather.
My DNA are probably to mixed along the way down to me in order to be of any interest.
Gorm "den Gamle", dansk konge is Ulf Ingvar Göte Martinsson's 27th great grandfather!
http://www.geni.com/path/Ulf-Martinsson+is+related+to+Gorm-den-Gaml...
Eystein Ivarsson «the Noisy» Glumra is Ulf Ingvar Göte Martinsson's 30th great grandfather!
http://www.geni.com/path/Ulf-Martinsson+is+related+to+Eystein-Ivars...
Well, this could explain the lust to split someones scull wide open just to see if they had any brain... Thorfinn 'Skull-Splitter', Jarl of Orkney
They probably were just like "Jason", all the killing raised their dopamine levels so they became high, I see them as ancient drug-addicts.
Imagine that someone from our time, time traveled back to that time, I guess it would be extremely hard to just survive one or a couple of days
wherever you went, like being in the midst of the psychopath's paradise.
Either they would see you as weak, then not worth to be living, or they would see you as strong, a threat not worth letting live, or they would notice that you are smart, making them feel stupid, so you must die,
or they would see you as stupid just worth to be played to death with,
or you happened to just look at them in a funny way, or you did not respect them by trying to not look at them, whatever, you must pay with your death. Anyone that were not born and raised in their way, would have extremely hard just to survive, so what happened was that people gave each other gifts all the time, in hope that that would let them be.
No one would go inside a tigers cage without having something to bribe the tigers with, without distractions, you are dead meat. Then they also lived by idiotic codes of honor, if you made someone loose their honor, they just had to revenge and how can anyone know before how somebody else will react afterwards?
Speech is silver, silence is gold, or, people had surely more reason to regret something they said or did than something they never said or did at all. I really do believe it's a wonder that anyone from those cultures survived at all.
I agree Ulf, from the that time period people were brutes and lived primarily by their primitive nature. We are much more civilized now. I had a dream once that I belonged to an invisible group of people who lived long ago by the rocky black shale cliffs. They knew some secret alchemy or something to make themselves invisible and lived hundreds of years never aging and could stay in states of suspended animation for 100 yrs. at a time. They wanted to share something important, some hidden knowledge with mankind but could not because if they revealed themselves they would be killed by the Vikings or other brute type people living in that area. They simply waited and waited for Humans to become more civilized but some internal conflict in their own society caused one of them to break the invisibility spell over suspicion and jealousy unfounded. True to the nature of the inhabitants of the area once they became exposed all of them were killed except one person, a Woman who knew of what was to happen. I think she became part of the Tuatha de Danann. She could not share the knowledge with the inhabitants for they were still too brutish to understand.