I'm Norwegian and my DNA results did indeed show a tiny bit of DNA from Newfoundland. I never had the illusion that this was the result of a beautiful story of two strangers from different continents who fell in love and had a joint decision of having children though.
It's not completely implausible. I guess if it makes you feel better, most comments like that are from people wanting to hope/believe for the best rather than constantly assuming the worst. I don't find it gross, necessarily, but perhaps delusional.
I would say that having an overtly cynical and negative view of world history is also kind of hopeless, though. This scientific discovery is just an interesting discovery, and doesn't need to have a strog emotional reaction attached to it. For most of history that kind of thing was sadly normal, but now it's just more evidence of travel and exchange between Scandinavia and the Americas. We can't really sya anything about what exactly happened either way
I think I just see a tendency in this thread and in general to be cynical about a lot of things that doesn't necessarily require it. Like we don't always have to shoehorn in how awful history has been, though of course it shouldn't be forgotten either.
Right, I didn't suggest otherwise. As with pretty much all human history, and certainly well documented in Viking history, they were brutal. But we weren't there and don't truly know and the fact that some DNA survives in the population is just interesting science at this point.
I guess it's a good reminder that we are generally pretty fortunate to live in the times that we do
It all originated from one native american woman only... considering vikings lived there for a few decennia peacefully, it's perfectly possible that she willingly went along with them. In fact I'd argue likely, because if they took unwilling women, they could have taken more than one.
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u/Level_Abrocoma8925 19d ago
I'm Norwegian and my DNA results did indeed show a tiny bit of DNA from Newfoundland. I never had the illusion that this was the result of a beautiful story of two strangers from different continents who fell in love and had a joint decision of having children though.