As 23 And Me's Database Grows... It Turns Out I Am Viking, Too...

About four years ago, I first mentioned that I had agreed to be sequenced at 23 and Me. Now, three and three quarters years on (post learning my results) -- as the genetic database at 23 and Me has grown exponentially, the company is able to provide new ancestry insights to all of us early adopters, based on the increasing depth and breadth of the genome data -- now from approaching a million contributors.

As a result, I've just recently learned, that at some point, likely in the early 1500s, one of my direct line ancestors was 100 per cent Scandinavian. This is as surprising as any of the things I've learned over these years -- as my more recent roots are Irish and English and Hungarian/Ashkenazi.

So it was with keen interest, this past week, that I read about one of the most famous Viking warrior burial sites (known and preserved since the 1880s) -- and the late breaking DNA analysis of one skull, found there.

It was long suspected, but now it is proved: at least one of the warriors, buried with full honors, was a woman. I'll leave it to others to guess at how widespread -- and high ranking -- these women would have been, but it makes no sense at all to assume this was an aberration. Here is the bit:

. . . .New DNA evidence uncovered by researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University shows that there were in fact female Viking warriors. The remains of an iconic Swedish Viking Age grave now reveal that war was not an activity exclusive to males -- women could be found in the higher ranks at the battlefield. . . .

The study was conducted on one of the most well-known graves from the Viking Age, a mid-10th century grave in Swedish Viking town Birka. The burial was excavated in the 1880s, revealing remains of a warrior surrounded by weapons, including a sword, armour-piercing arrows, and two horses. There was also a full set of gaming pieces and a gaming board. . . .

"The gaming set indicates that she was an officer, someone who worked with tactics and strategy and could lead troops in battle. What we have studied was not a Valkyrie from the sagas but a real life military leader, that happens to have been a woman," says Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, Stockholm University, who led the study. . . .

Perhaps on a tangent -- but it may only be a matter of time before we will be able to extract DNA from the relics of first century apostles, and perhaps the man revered as Christ himself -- and in Da Vinci Code fashion, establish that there are now living direct descendants of Jesus Christ.

It remains to be seen however, whether the Vatican would allow a DNA extraction -- from any of these reliquaries. But as a recovering Catholic, and more importantly, a man of science -- I will hope the church progresses to the point that her Pope, too, would want the answers. . . . here's to. . . progress! Onward -- for a mountain-bike ride, now.

नमस्ते