The One Hair Color Vikings Most Commonly Had

Publish date: 2024-05-02

The study's co-author Professor Eske Willerslev told The Guardian, "Vikings are, genetically, not purely Scandinavian," and their most common hair color was actually not blond, but black. According to Science Magazine, ancient Vikings were even more likely to have black hair than modern Scandinavians or Danes today. This is because some people buried in Viking-style graves in Norway were found to be members of a group of Indigenous people called the Saami, who were genetically more closely related to East Asians and Siberians than modern-day Scandinavians, as the study reported.

Groups that were then identified under the loose category of Vikings eventually split off into separate groups, with some Swedish Vikings going East to modern-day Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics, and those with Danish blood more likely to travel west toward what is now England. Norwegian Vikings went on to populate Ireland, Iceland, and Greenland. So the next time you picture a fierce Viking, you might want to remember that no one single "look" defined the genetically diverse population of seafaring pirates.

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