My European Family
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Pokutta, D. A. (2013). Population dynamics, diet and migrations of the Unetice culture in Poland. Diss. Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg.
Thornton, C. & Roberts, B. (2009). Introduction: The beginnings of metallurgy in global perspective. Journal of World Prehistory, 22 (3), 181–184. doi:10.1007/s10963-009-9026-2
YFull.com. Read on 25 May 2015.
Zich, Bernd. Interview, September 2013.
Arche Nebra, visitors’ centre. Visited in November 2014.
State Museum of Prehistory (Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte), Halle. Visited in September 2013 and November 2014.
Vitlycke Museum, Tanum. Visited in August 2014.
The Rock Engravers
I strongly recommend a visit to the Vitlycke Museum of Rock Carvings (Hällristningsmuseet) at Vitlycke near Tanumshede, Bohuslän. Some of the most remarkable petroglyphs are to be found just a few minutes’ walk from the museum. It’s best to set aside a whole day, so as to have enough time to walk, cycle or drive around the area and look at several rock engravings. The museum hires out bicycles. It takes between two and three hours by coach and/or train to get there from Gothenburg. The final stretch is between one and five kilometres (⅔–3 miles) on foot, depending on your connection.
Bengtsson, L. (2004). Bilder vid vatten. Licenciate thesis. Gothenburg: Univ. Gothenburg.
Kristiansen, K. (1998). Europe Before History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kristiansen, K. & Larsson, T. B. (2005). The Rise of Bronze Age Society: travels, transmissions and transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ling, J. (2008). Elevated rock art: towards a maritime understanding of Bronze Age rock art in northern Bohuslän, Sweden. Diss. Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg.
McGovern, P. E., Hall, G. R., & Mirzoian, A. (2013). A biomolecular archaeological approach to “Nordic grog”. Danish Journal of Archaeology, 2 (2), 112–131.
Rosengren Pielberg, G., Golovko, A., Fitzsimmons, C., Lindblad-Toh, K., Andersson, L., Sundström, E., et al. (2008). A cis-acting regulatory mutation causes premature hair graying and susceptibility to melanoma in the horse. Nature Genetics, 40 (8), 1004–1009. doi:10.1038/ng.185
Ling, Johan. Telephone interview, October 2014.
Iron and the Plague
Bos, K. I., Schuenemann, V. J., Golding, G. B., Burbano, H. A., Waglechner, N., Coombes, B. K., et al. (2011). A draft genome of Yersinia pestis from victims of the Black Death. Nature, 478 (7370), 506–510. doi:10.1038/nature10549
Gräslund, B. (2007). Fimbulvintern, Ragnarök och klimatkrisen år 536–537 e. Kr. Saga och sed.
Haensch, S., Bianucci, R., Signoli, M., Rajerison, M., Schultz, M., Kacki, S., et al. (2010). Distinct clones of Yersinia pestis caused the Black Death. PLOS Pathogens, 6 (10), e1001134. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1001134
Harbeck, M., Seifert, L., Hänsch, S., Wagner, D. M., Birdsell, D., Parise, K. L., et al. (2013). Yersinia pestis DNA from skeletal remains from the 6th century AD reveals insights into Justinianic Plague. PLOS Pathogens, 9 (5), 1–8. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1003349
Lagerås, P. (2013). Agrara fluktuationer och befolkningsutveckling på sydsvenska höglandet tolkade utifrån röjningsrösen. Fornvännen, 108 (2013), 263–277.
Larsen, L. B., Vinther, B. M., Briffa, K. R., Melvin, T. M., Clausen, H. B., Jones, P. D., et al. (2008). New ice core evidence for a volcanic cause of the A.D. 536 dust veil. Geophysical Research Letters, 35 (4), doi:10.1029/2007GL032450
Manco, J. (2013). Ancestral Journeys: the peopling of Europe from the first ventures to the Vikings. London: Thames & Hudson.
Myrdal, J. (2003). Digerdöden, pestvågor och ödeläggelse: ett perspektiv på senmedeltidens Sverige. Stockholm: Sällsk. Runica et Mediævalia.
Wagner, D. M., Klunk, J., Harbeck, M., Devault, A., Waglechner, N., Sahl, J. W., et al. (2014). Yersinia pestis and the plague of Justinian 541–543 AD: a genomic analysis. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 14 (4), 319–326. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(13)70323-2
Am I a Viking?
The Swedish History Museum in Stockholm houses a major exhibition on the Vikings. Birka, a former Viking settlement on the island of Björkö in Lake Mälaren, is a very popular tourist destination.
The Danish National Museum in Copenhagen is also strong on this period. The Viking Ship Museum in Oslo (Vikingskipshuset) and its counterpart in Roskilde, Denmark (Vikingeskibsmuseet) are other places of pilgrimage for Viking enthusiasts.
The books of Richard Hall and Jean Manco portray the period from a British perspective. I strongly recommend the new book by the Yale professor Anders Winroth, who was kind enough to check the facts in the Viking chapter of this book.
Ebenesersdóttir, S., Sigurdsson, A., Stefánsson, K., Helgason, A., Sánchez-Quinto, F., & Lalueza-Fox, C. (2011). A new subclade of mtDNA haplogroup c1 found in Icelanders: evidence of pre-columbian contact? American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 144 (1), 92–99. doi:10.1002/ajpa.21419
Goodacre, S., Helgason, A., Nicholson, J., Southam, L., Ferguson, L., Hickey, E., & et al. (2005). Genetic evidence for a family-based Scandinavian settlement of Shetland and Orkney during the Viking periods. Heredity, 95 (2), 129–135. doi:10.1038/sj.hdy.6800661
Hall, R. (2007). Exploring the World of the Vikings. London: Thames & Hudson.
Hall, R. A. (2012). Exploring the World of the Vikings (1st paperback edition). London: Thames & Hudson.
Haywood, J. (1995). The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings. London: Penguin.
Helgason, A., Sigurðardóttir, S., Nicholson, J., Sykes, B., Hill, E. W., Bradley, D. G., et al. (2000). Estimating Scandinavian and Gaelic ancestry in the male settlers of Iceland. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 67, 697–717. doi:10.1086/303046
Helgason, A., Hickey, E., Goodacre, S., Bosnes, V., Stefánsson, K., Ward, R., & Sykes, B. (2001). mtDNA and the islands of the North Atlantic: estimating the proportions of Norse and Gaelic ancestry. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 68, 723–737. doi:10.1086/318785
Krzewińska, M., Bjørnstad, G., Skoglund, P., Olason, P. I., Bill, J., Götherström, A., & Hagelberg, E. (2015). Mitochondrial DNA variation in the Viking age population of Norway. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 370 (1660), doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0384
Leslie, S., Winney, B., Boumertit, A., Day, T., Hutnik, K., Royrvik, E., et al. (2015). The fine-scale genetic structure of the British population. Nature, 519 (7543), 309–314. doi:10.1038/nature14230
Manco, J. (2013). Ancestral Journeys: the peopling of Europe from the first ventures to the Vikings. London: Thames & Hudson.
Naumann, E., Krzewinska, M., Gotherstrom, A., & Eriksson, G. (2014). Slaves as burial gifts in Viking Age Norway? Evidence from stable isotope and ancient DNA analyses. Journal of Archaeological Science, 41, 533–540.
Winroth, A. (2014). The Age of the Vikings. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bojs, Anders. Conversations and emails, 2013–2015.
Salomonsson, Klas. Conversations and emails, 2013–2014.
Danish National Museum, Copenhagen. Visited in February 2014 and January 2015.
Swedish History Museum, Stockholm. Visited several times in 2014.
Urshult. Visited in the summer of 2013.
The Mothers
Karlberg, G. (1976[1908]). Anteckningar om Glafva socken i Värmland (new edition). Karlstad: Föreningen för Värmlandslitteratur.
Turesson, G. (1976). Visor och skaldeminnen. Stockholm: LT.
Andersson, Dagmar. Conversation, November 2014.
Juås, Birgitta. Conversation, July 2014.
Lindgren, K. Conversation, July 2012.
Olausson, Peter. Interview, July 2014.
Documents from Glava outdoor museum (hembygdsgård).
Further information has come to light since this book was written. If you think you could be related to me in the maternal line, please contact me via my homepage at karinbojs.se for more details.
The Leg
acy of Hitler and Stalin
Abecasis, G., Auton, A., Brooks, L. D., DePristo, M.A., et al. (2012). An integrated map of genetic variation from 1,092 human genomes. Nature, 491 (7422), 56–65. doi:10.1038/nature11632
Pringle, P. (2008). The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: the story of Stalin’s persecution of one of the great scientists of the twentieth century. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Jakobsson, Mattias. Interview, November 2014.
Pääbo, Svante. Interview, December 2014.
Vavilov Institute, St Petersburg. Visited in September 2010.
The Tree and the Spring
This chapter is a summary of the book’s overall findings, together with my personal reflections. References to scientific and academic works are given for previous chapters. The legend of Saint Botvid – like all such legends – should be taken with a large pinch of salt. However, he is mentioned in a number of documents, including the Vallentuna Calendar or Kalendarium Vallentunense from the 1190s. More information about the church building (in Swedish) can be found on Botkyrka parish’s homepage (www.visitbotkyrka.se).
Questions and Answers about DNA
If you are interested in a book containing more technical information about the use of DNA in researching family history, I recommend you read Magnus Bäckmark’s Genvägar. It is important to get hold of the latest edition, as this kind of information dates quickly.
In 2015, the Swedish Association of Family History Researchers (Sveriges släktforskarförbund) also published a basic instruction manual by the expert Peter Sjölund, Släktforska med DNA.
Bäckmark, M. (2013). Genvägar: praktisk handledning till DNA-jämförelse i släktforskning (2nd, augmented edition). Åkersberga: Gröna stubben.
The International Society of Genetic Genealogy has plenty of useful information on its website: www.isogg.org
Acknowledgements
A very large number of people have played a part in bringing this book to fruition. As regards fact-checking alone, 33 people – all of them experts in their respective fields – have invested time and effort in combing through the text. Should any errors have crept in despite their efforts, the fault is mine, not theirs.
To list everyone who has been involved would take a disproportionate amount of space. The 70-odd researchers who kindly agreed to be interviewed and to reply to the floods of questions I sent them are listed in the references that precede these pages.
Nonetheless, there are a few individuals I would like to single out for special thanks. I am particularly grateful to Svante Pääbo, Pontus Skoglund, Mattias Jakobsson and Carole McCartney.
Among the genealogy researchers I have consulted, Håkan Skogsjö, Peter Sjölund and Mats Ahlgren in particular have gone out of their way to help me.
I would like to thank my uncle, Anders Bojs, for agreeing to take a DNA test.
My friends Christina Wilén, Daniel Olsson and Per Snaprud, who belong to my writers’ circle, have taught me a great deal about the craft of storytelling, and my friend Anna Svensson has drilled me in how to cite references correctly.
I have benefited from the professional fact-checking and editorial expertise of Maria Gunther and Anna Bodin, my colleagues at Dagens Nyheter, while Stefan Rothmaier has done wonders with the book’s illustrations.
A number of my journeys were financed by a grant from the Swedish Journalists’ Association, Svenska Journalistförbundet.
The publishing staff at Albert Bonniers have had to put up with my uncompromising standards and exacting ambitions. I would like to express my appreciation of Martin Kaunitz’s resolute interventions and Elisabeth Watson-Straarup’s patience and language skills, which enabled her to gather illustrations from all over Europe.
And finally, I would like to thank my English translator, Fiona Graham, and the staff at Bloomsbury. It has been a pleasure to work with such professional people.
Plates
The head of a lion and the body of a man: the Lion Man was carved out of ivory from a mammoth’s tusk. This and other figurines from Swabia are the oldest known examples of figurative art.
This preserved flute from the cave at Hohle Fels is made from the bone from a vulture’s wing. The person who made it incised markings to ensure that the holes were pierced in the right positions.
The Neanderthals had already been living in Europe and Asia for several hundred millennia when modern people arrived and took over.
The first farmers in Germany built this solar observatory at Goseck over 7,000 years ago. This means Goseck is considerably older than the better-known stone circle, Stonehenge. At the midwinter solstice, you can see the sun rise and set through two gaps in the wooden palisade.
The people who used Göbekli Tepe dragged huge blocks of stone to the site. They carved images of scorpions, birds and other animals, and erected the stones in the round buildings where they worshipped.
Mammoths are the most frequently occurring motif in the Rouffignac cave. Over 150 such pictures have been found.
Ötzi weighed only about 50 kilos, but he was strong and wiry. The museum in Bolzano, Italy, displays the model witha bare torso. However, a striped cloak made of goat hide, a loincloth of goat leather, a bearskin cap and a raincoat made of grass stalks were among the finds.
Brother, sister and betrothed? The three young people in Dolni Vestonice’s triple grave are the oldest found to belong to haplogroups U5 and U8. All of them died about 31,000 years ago.
The Nebra sky disc is made of bronze, with pieces of gold plate attached. It could be used by an expert to help predict the summer and winter solstices and synchronise the lunar and solar years.
At the archaeological site of Khirokitia, archaeologists and craftsmen have reconstructed some of the round buildings where Cyprus’s first farmers lived.
Stonehenge seems to have been used mainly at the winter solstice. Farming people had been erecting similar circles of wooden posts almost since they first arrived in England. But the world-famous megaliths were added later on, some of them at the dawn of the Bronze Age.
While the Ice Age was gradually slackening its grip on the globe, regional temperature changes could be dramatic. The curves illustrate analyses of cores from the Greenland ice sheet.
DNA analyses shows the dispersal of people from the Yamnaya steppe culture, first towards the Corded Ware culture of central Europe and subsequently towards the Bell Beaker culture of western Europe.
R1a CLANS The Indo-European pastoralist culture of the steppes included men belonging to haplogroup R1a. During the Bronze Age, they had a very large number of descendants who spread throughout Europe and down to south Asia.
There is a guesthouse today next to the site where the first Cro-Magnons were discovered. The house is built into the cliffs, just like the huts of the Cro-Magnon people. Here I am in front of the house.
My mother, Anita, aged about twenty.
My paternal grandmother, Hilda, with her mother, Elin, and her daughter, Gunnel. The little girl in the picture is my cousin Kristina. Today she is a grandmother herself, and her daughter’s daughter has the same mitochondria as the women depicted here.
Index
Aboriginals here, here
Abri Pataud, France here–here, here, here
acupuncture here
Adam here
agriculture here–here, here–here
Anatolia, Turkey here–here
arrival in Sweden here–here
climate change here–here, here–here
Cyprus here–here, here–here, here–here
expansion theory here–here
Galilee here–here
Hungary here–here
soil types here–here
Syria here–here
Ahlström, Torbjörn here
Ahrensberg culture here–here
alcohol here–here, here, here, here–here
Alt, Kurt here–here
amber here–here
Amesbury Archer here–here, here, here, here
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Anatolia, Turkey here–here
ancestors here–here
Andersson, Dan here, here
Andersson, Leif here
Anglo-Saxons here
Anning, Mary here
Anthony, David here, here–here, here, here–here, here–here
Aronsson, Kjell-Åke here–here, here
arrows here, here, here, here, here, here, here
art here, here–here, here–here, here, here
astronomy here–here, here–here
Nebra sky disc here–here, here–here, here, here
atlatls here
Auel, Jean M. here
The Clan of the Cave Bear here–here, here–here
Aurignacian culture here–here, here–here, here, here–here, here, here, here, here
Baillie, Michael here–here
Bánffy, Eszter here–here, here
Bar-Yosef, Ofer here, here–here
Barum woman here–here, here
Basques here–here
Battleaxe culture here–here
beads here
Beckman, Lars here
beer here, here–here, here
Bell Beaker culture here, here–here, here–here, here, here, here
Berbers here
Beringia here, here
Bjerck, Hein Bjartmann here–here
Black Death here–here
Bleek, Wilhelm here
boats here–here, here–here, here, here
long-distance craft here, here, here
bog people here–here
Bohuslän, Sweden here–here, here–here, here–here, here, here
Bojs, Anita here–here, here–here
Bojs, Eric here, here, here–here, here
Bojs, Göran here, here
Bojs, Hilda here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here–here