Two Vikings' relatives in the Denmark Museum
Two skeletons reunited after 1000 years apartفراق
The DNA map of the two skeletons revealed a second-degree kinship.
AFP
The meeting yesterday at the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen included two Viking warriors belonging to the same family, after they had been separated for 1,000 years, an event that provides new data on the history of movements in Europe.
One of the two people was killed at the beginning of the eleventh century in England from head injuries and was buried in a mass grave in Oxford, while the other died in Denmark, and his skeleton showed signs of blows, indicating that he may have participated in battles.
A DNA map of the two skeletons dating back to the Viking era (between the eighth and twelfth centuries) revealed that they had a second degree of kinship.
Archaeologist Janet Varberg of the National Museum said, "It is a great discovery, as it has become possible to trace the movements spatially and temporally through a family."
Over two hours, two of her colleagues reconstructed the skeleton of a man in his twenties, using about 150 bones loaned from the Oxfordshire Museum for three years.
Historians agree that the ancestors of the Danes conquered Scotland and England.
It is possible that the young man was "killed during a Viking attack, but another theory is that he was the victim of a royal decree from the King of England, Ethelred II, who in 1002 ordered the killing of all the Danes of England," Farberg explained.
She explained that it is very rare to discover kinship ties between different skeletons, especially when it is not related to kings.
If the kinship between the two skeletons is indisputable, it is impossible to determine the exact connection between the two men.
The archaeologist said: "It is very difficult to determine whether they lived at the same time or perhaps there was a generation difference, because their graves do not contain anything that can provide an accurate dating, so there is a margin of about 50 years."
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