Relations of Norse raiders are in our midst more than 1,000 years on

Research suggests that around one million Britons can claim direct descent from Vikings, with 5.6 per cent of men from Yorkshire testing positive for DNA patterns rarely found outside of the Norse warriors’ native Norway and Sweden.

By studying Y chromosome markers, which are inherited from father to son, of more than 3,500 British men, researchers found that One in 33 men across the UK were a direct match.

Men from the far north of Scotland were most likely to provide a direct match. Some 29.2 per cent of the men from the Shetland Islands tested positive for Viking blood.

With around one in 20 Yorkshiremen proving positive matches, the county ranks as the eighth highest area of Britain for Viking ancestry.

Vikings first invaded Britain more than 1,000 years ago. Their story here is one of conquest, explusion, extortion and reconquest.

The Norse invaders are known for having settled in York, which they named Jorvik, and the city’s Viking heritage has been unearthed in a series of extensive archaeological digs.

Dr Jim Wilson, chief scientist at BritainsDNA which carried out the tests, said more Britons could be descendants of Vikings than the study reveals: “The research suggests that the concentration of Norse blood is quite variable, but as the Y chromosome only relates to the nation’s male population and only to one ancestral lineage for each man, there is a very real chance that many more of us are related to the Vikings.”