A Native American woman in Iceland

Researchers at the University of Iceland have discovered genetic evidence that suggests at least one woman from North America may have traveled to Europe 1000 years ago.

Ten years ago, Agnar Helgason, a scientist at Iceland's deCODE Genetics, began investigating the origin of the Icelandic population. Most of the people he tested carried genetic links to either Scandinavians or people from the British Isles. But a small group of Icelanders -- roughly 350 in total -- carried a lineage known as C1, usually seen only in Asians and Native Americans. "We figured it was a recent arrival from Asia," says Helgason. "But we discovered a much deeper story than we expected."

Helgason's graduate student, Sigridur Sunna Ebenesersdottir, found that she could trace the matrilineal sequence to a date far earlier than when the first Asians began arriving in Iceland. In fact, she found that all the people who carry the C1 lineage are descendants of one of four women alive around the year 1700. In all likelihood, those four descended from a single woman. And because archeological remains in what is Canada today suggest that the Vikings were in the Americas around the year 1000 before retreating into a period of global isolation, the best explanation for that errant lineage lies with an American Indian woman: one who was taken back to Iceland some 500 years before Columbus set sail for the New World in 1492.

For now, the story of the lone American Indian woman taken on a Viking ship to Iceland remains a hypothesis. To prove it will require finding the same genetic sequence in older Amerindian remains elsewhere in the world -- family members, as it were, of that 1,000-year-old woman who ended up so far from home.

Via Indian Country

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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ocschwar

“It seems unlikely that there were only four living descendants after the first 700 years, if 300 years after that there are now 350 living descendants.”

Only four direct matrilineal descendants.
Anonymous

I can’t help but notice the absence of discussion regarding the possibility that these four women might simply be an offspring of Native American and Viking parents from Greenland or the Viking colonies in North America. The small number could easily be reconciled with this hypothesis if only a few of the descendents travelled back to Iceland….but the thought that only admixture descendents (and not a full-blooded Native American) made it to Iceland just isn’t as compelling of a story for the masses.
OriGuy

It seems possible that this American women went first to Greenland and her descendants may have lived there before the Norse colonies failed in the 15th century. If only a few of them made it back to Iceland, that could account for the small number of descendants.
Anonymous

It’s possible that the mixing occurred on Greenland and then somebody of this lineage made her way back to Iceland at a fairly late date. If it’s an Inuit lineage then the mixing most likely occurred in the 14th century as they were late arrivals on Greenland (the island was empty when colonized by the Norse). It’s known visiting traders married local girls so I could imagine one of them taking her home to Iceland.
MollyMaguire

Don’t suppose there are any Skraelingsons or Skraelingsdottirs in Iceland?
skeletoncityrepeater

If you just read for 20 seconds about the locations and anthropology of various ‘Inuit’ (sorry but I don’t have a better word), it’s not surprising that some people moved farther than the general population. Surprise.. If you look at the top of the globe, Russia is mostly in Asia, Europe is technically right next to North America.. is it hard to fathom that some other people got to other parts of Europe besides Greenland?

Anyway, it’s not like there is an Aztec guy laid to rest 100 feet below Stonehenge or anything…?
- arikol
  
  There is no way that an amerindian got to Iceland without an ocean going ship, and the timeframe suggests viking travel being the culprit here.
  
  350 identified descendants isn’t that small a group, either. Remember that the whole population of Iceland is only 300 thousand. There were also periods where the Icelanders almost died out.
  
  Walk across the frozen sea and such????? have you ever SEEN the north atlantic? It can’t freeze solid for walking due to the warm undercurrents. It would also have been a 2000 mile journey without food, shelter, or firewood. The Bering strait, OTOH is a relatively small stretch, and lacks these heating currents.
  
  It is already known that the vikings went to north america way before Columbus. The questions are only: How far did they go? (some hypotheses have the vikings going quite far south and inland), and how many people they brought back with them? (the vikings were farmers, travelers, and businesmen. Not warriors. Sure, a few towns and churches in britain might beg to differ, but those were easy pickings)
turn_self_off

And here i managed to read the headline as being about a modern American living in modern day Iceland and commenting on the social differences…
hungryjoe

It seems unlikely that there were only four living descendants after the first 700 years, if 300 years after that there are now 350 living descendants. To me that indicates an arrival in Iceland sometime after 1600. This is very plausible, given the presence of active European fishing fleets in the Great Banks area since the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries.

The paragraph at the end suggesting a possible alternate European source for the C1 gene is pretty neat.
- dragonfrog
  
  Just because the 350 were matrilineal descendants of four women in the 1700s, doesn’t mean there weren’t more people with that C1 gene around – it just means that the smallest set of people they can trace back, that all the 350 were descended from, is these four women.
  
  IANA biologist, but it seems to me there could also have been plenty of other descendants of this one hypothetical native American around, just that somewhere along the line, this C1 genetic sequence wasn’t passed on. If it’s only passed on matrilineally, then anyone who has only sons (or whose daughters don’t have daughters…) breaks the chain as well.
- Anonymous
  
  @hungryjoe: I tend to agree. If there were only 4 descendents in 1700, then it was either a very thin lineage or (more likely) a more recent transplant.
  
  What is the occurrence of C1 in various American cultures? If the person came over in 1000, she was likely Beothuk or Innu. If she came later, then more likely she was Thule.
redesigned

I read about this a while back as an explanation for the legend of skraelings, the C1e gene can be traced back to a clan leader that according to the stories took a skraeling bride.

http://www.let-the-right-one-in.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2246&start=20
Michael Smith

As long as modern humans have lived on Earth it has been possible, I think, for a single human to see much of the world in a lifetime. A hundred thousand years ago we were as smart as we are today. Boat building goes back a long way and there are few real gaps in the map where a serious sea crossing is required.

You can walk across the Arctic and the Bering strait. Iceland and New Zealand are examples of places which could only have been reached in the last couple of thousand years because of the need for seriously good ocean going craft.

The C1 lineage stands out because of the isolated location of Iceland. But I don’t believe that there were no native American people in Europe 10000 years ago, and vice versa.
- Anonymous
  
  Indeed, both Indian and Pacific ocean have been traversed by means of ‘stone age’ technology, as migratory patterns clearly indicate. Population of Madagascar originated in Borneo (on the opposite side of ocean). Polynesia was explored and populated by people ulti8mately originating from Taiwan.
- RyanH
  
  Boat building goes back a long way and there are few real gaps in the map where a serious sea crossing is required. You can walk across the Arctic and the Bering strait.
  
  Those ocean-crossing boats? Lots and lots of experimentation. Over lots and lots of time. And the map sure is easy to navigate when you already have the globe laid flat on your table.
  
  And with the best gear and maps and communications people still die crossing the Arctic and sailing the easiest crossings.
  
  Realistically, if you said that someone in antiquity walked a great journey from Africa to the Orient I’d look at the evidence. But once you get to the oceans and polar caps you had better have some damn strong evidence on hand.
Anonymous

Four pure matrilineal descendants in 1700 would be what one would expect on average if the population as a whole had quadrupled since the one person’s arrival. In a population of steady size, a woman has, on average, only one pure matrilineal descendent in each generation. The geometric growth in the number of descendents comes in the increasing numbers of patterns of descent, that is, sons of daughters, daughters of sons, and so on.
IsoTop

Bjork
Anonymous

The “Little Ice Age” could be one explanation for the thin lineage:

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

This reminds me of the old NFB short “The Visitor”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0ubKuNcq58
ill lich

OK, so Iceland is Europe, and Greenland is the “New World”?

Makes sense, I guess you gotta draw the line somewhere.
- billstewart
  
  I can’t tell from the articles if this means that she was from the Vinland area the Vikings are said to have settled (somewhere in Newfoundland), or if she could have been a Greenlander that the Vikings met when they settled there.
- EvilSpirit
  
  Iceland is only considered part of Europe because it’s the part of North America that Europeans discovered first, and the next-nearest part of North America was so forbidding that they went no farther.
  - Anonymous
    
    If we go by tectonic plates, Iceland is half & half, because it lies on the fault line. However, I’d say it’s sensible to associate us with Europe since the culture is Scandinavian.
    
    Though of course these definitions are arbitrary; if Iceland had been populated by people from Greenland before the Norwegians could take the land, I’m sure it would be associated with America rather than Europe.
    - turn_self_off
      
      On that note, Greenland is Danish…
  - ill lich
    
    Yes, I know, it’s all a rich tapestry. I just think it’s funny the way we draw these lines on the map to denote “here” and “there.”
    
    The other thing this article brings to mind are lyrics from a song I once heard Pete Seeger sing, though I don’t know if he is the author:
    
    There were no red-haired Irishmen
    until the Vikings came to Ireland,
    and how many Romans had dark curly hair
    before they brought slaves from Africa?
    No race on Earth is completely pure
    nor is anyone’s mind, and that’s for sure,
    the winds mix the dust up from every land,
    and so will woman and man.
Anonymous

Isn’t it also possible that this person was a Native North American women explorer that traveled without Viking assistance?
- Bevatron Repairman
  
  @6: Possible, I suppose. But we *know* the Vikings were capable of these sorts of voyages at the time — and no evidence that I know of ocean-going Native Americans. So Vikings are a lot more likely based on what we know.
Lobster

Further new evidence shows that she found the locals to be rude and wished they would just speak English.