In the eastern settlement of Greenland, labeled “Ø029a” in the study, archeologists excavated a multitude of graves around Thjodhilds church at Erik the reds famous residence, the Brattahlíð. Thjodhild, Eriks wife was a Christian, while Erik refused to convert and remained pagan.

The noteworthy aspect of these graves is that while they were buried at the church, which the archeologists noted there were a few graves that were exhumed and moved to the church after they were buried, and conducted isotope analyses that revealed they were migrants from Iceland

Now the striking fact of the matter, is that there is a direct reference to reburying the former dead at the church in Eiríks saga rauða, or The Saga of Erik the Red:

“It is,” said [Thorstein], “no good custom which has prevailed here in Greenland since Christianity came, to bury men in unconsecrated ground with few religious rites over them. I wish for myself, and for those other men who have died, to be taken to the church.

This directly aligns the archeology and mythology with each other, as we have formerly seen with the Yngling king Yngvars grave, as well as the accounts of Jordanes about the origin of the Goths, it seems these ancient people were more earnest than scholars give them credit for!

Now let’s take a look at the DNA of these reburied pagan graves, one of which is likely Erik the red himself given the possible genetic relation and Icelandic birthplace as evidenced by their tooth oxygen isotopes.

The remains were all carbon dated between the 10-12th centuries, which would line up with Erik the reds lifetime being born right in the middle of the 10th century and dying in the very early 11th century. The Y-DNA haplogroup lineages are as follows:

VK179 / Greenland F2: I-F3312 VK180 / Greenland F3: IJ (likely I1) VK182 / Greenland F5: I (likely I1) VK183 / Greenland F6: I-F3312 VK184 / Greenland F7: R-YP4342 VK513 / Greenland F8: R-S2886 VK185 / Greenland F9: CT (could be any)

These lineages are very typical of Jæren, Norway which is where Eriks father was from, and looking at modern haplogroups in that area and subtracting later ones from the rest of Europe, they seem to line up with the general distribution.

While there is no further archeological evidence to determine which one is Erik, we can only go based on DNA, which I lean towards VK179 on, considering it plots the closest with Iron age Norwegians and the southern pure Viking age Norwegians. Which would represent Erik the best.

This is where Erik was born, with ancestry from Agder. The rest have excess British type admixture (ignore the ancestry estimates in the study since they use modern populations and Norwegians have British like admixture already).

VK179 and VK184 are both relatives based on IBD, Erik and Leif maybe? The final bit of evidence for this is that both VK179 and VK184 are on I-F3312, which is a rare I1 subclade.

This is shared only in the ancient DNA record with the newly discovered “Sverresborg Well Man,” who the study indicated likely originate from Agder, which is where Eriks great great grandfather, Oxen-Thorir along with his whole family originated. In the upcoming study on him:

All in all, this indicates one of these chaps could be Erik himself, what do you think?

@inglaff Interesting. I am related to VK180, not terribly close - genetic distance of 11.112, but I seem to be among the closer people who have matched this sample.

@inglaff @nrken19 I share alleles with someone buried in their settlement. And a convicted murder from Iceland who was put to death.