DNA of ancient Roman buried in York reveals Scandinavian ancestry

People with Scandinavian ancestry were in Britain long before the Anglo-Saxons or the Vikings turned up, researchers have found after studying the genetics of an ancient Roman man buried in York.

- Nicola Davis

The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons brought an influx of Scandinavians to ancient Britain in the fifth century, with the first major Viking raid - which targeted the monastery at Lindisfarne - occurring in AD793.

However, researchers studying a man thought to have been a Roman soldier - or perhaps even a gladiator - who lived around the second to fourth century have found 25% of his ancestry came from Scandinavia.

"The ancestry that we thought would come in [with] Anglo-Saxons maybe in some parts was already there," said Dr Leo Speidel, first author of the study and a group leader at Riken, Japan.