The ancestors of modern Russians are the Slavic tribes, whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the wooded areas of the Pinsk Marshes, one of the largest wetlands in Europe.
In the 2021 Census, roughly 71.7% of the population were ethnic Russians, 16.7% of the population were ethnic minorities and 11.6% did not state an ethnicity.
The historical people known as Vikings, who hailed from Scandinavia in Northern Europe, are well-known today for their exploits in the west. But the merchant-warriors also made their way into Eastern Europe, where they helped found a medieval federation in territory now known as Belarus, Ukraine and part of Russia.
The first human settlement on the territory of Russia dates back to the Oldowan period in the early Lower Paleolithic. About 2 million years ago, representatives of Homo erectus migrated from Western Asia to the North Caucasus (archaeological site of Kermek on the Taman Peninsula).
The smallest of these Indigenous groups are the Enets (350 people) and the Oroks (450 people), while the largest are the Nenets and Evenkis, which both have nearly 30,000 members. Of the 41 peoples, ten have fewer than 1,000 members and eleven live beyond the Arctic Circle.
Historians say that the Finno-Ugric people were the first inhabitants of Russia, with many of our customs and fairytales descending from their civilization: the cult of ancestors, the love of forests and villages, our patience and communality. But what remains of the ancient civilization is contested.
Russians are primarily descended from Slavs. However, Russia itself was created by a group of Vikings known as the Kievan Rus. Therefore, Russians have some Viking DNA in their ancestry. However, the original Vikings who founded Russia were absorbed into the native Slavic population.
From the 7th to the 11th centuries, much of Southern Russia was dominated by the Khazars, who, probably, also ruled over some Slavic tribes. Present-day Northern Russia was inhabited by Finno-Ugric peoples, who did not have states, but traded actively with Scandinavians, and later also with East Slavs.
Slavic tribes and Viking tribes were closely linked, fighting one another, intermixing and trading. “The presence of Slavic warriors in Denmark was more significant than previously thought; this image emerges from new research” Gardeła adds in the release.
During and after World War II, many Russian émigrés moved to the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, South Africa and Australia – where many of their communities still exist in the 21st century.
If we are speaking ethnically, the closest people to a Viking in modern-day terms would be the Danish, Norwegians, Swedish, and Icelandic people. Interestingly though, it was common for their male Viking ancestors to intermarry with other nationalities, and so there is a lot of mixed heritage.
“A lot of the Vikings are mixed individuals” with ancestry from both Southern Europe and Scandinavia, for example, or even a mix of Sami (Indigenous Scandinavian) and European ancestry.
Byzantine sources describe the Veneti as the ancestors of the Sclaveni (Slavs).
From about 1500 BC a group of people called the Slavs settled into the area which is now Poland and Western Russia. Although they were often under threat from other groups who wanted their land, they held their ground there until the arrival of the Vikings in the 9th century.
Rus, also spelled Ros, ancient people who gave their name to the lands of Russia and Belarus.
No significant differences were found for Russians and Ukrainians when compared to other Europeans - in fact, they fall within the range of gene diversity seen throughout Europe and exhibit the unimodal pattern of pairwise sequence differences.
Majority of Russians descend from Eastern Slavs not Scandinavians, there's very little Scandinavian ancestry. All that happened was that Scandinavians were ruling over the Slavs.
Sarmatians and Greeks
The Sarmatian rule in southern Russia lasted from the end of the 3rd century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. It was during the Scytho-Sarmation period that the Greeks started establishing their colonies on the coast of the Black Sea in southern Russia.
It turns out most Vikings weren't as fair-haired and blue-eyed as legend and pop culture have led people to believe. According to a new study on the DNA of over 400 Viking remains, most Vikings had dark hair and dark eyes.
Surnames ending in -son or -sen are an obvious sign of Scandinavian ancestry – but other names such as 'Linklater', 'Flett', 'Scarth', 'Heddle', 'McIvor', 'MacAulay' and 'McLeod', 'Roger/s' and 'Rogerson' and 'Rendall' could also be a sign.
Who are the descendants of the Vikings? Viking settlements exist in different parts of the world, including Denmark, Greenland, Iceland, Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Normandy and Swedish parts of Finland, Estonia and Latvia.
The genetic legacy of the Viking Age lives on today with six percent of people of the UK population predicted to have Viking DNA in their genes compared to 10 percent in Sweden. Professor Willerslev concluded: “The results change the perception of who a Viking actually was.
The DNA test shows that there is a strong Viking heritage on few countries in Europe from England, Ireland, and Iceland to Greenland. Samples of the DNA suggest links to Viking heritage. In Finland and Estonia, there are links for Swedish Viking heritage.