Nothing new in Sweden since the Bronze Age?

 Thanks to Danish researchers for releasing Scandinavian Bronze Age samples, available at ENA. I downloaded bam files of those Scandinavian Bronze Age I1 men mentioned in my previous post, processed them and ran a PCA plot, including present-day Europeans.  Here is a screenshot of the study preprint picture of corresponding samples:

The plot (below) shows evidently that all those I1 samples locate in the same position with present-day Swedes, excluding Swedish individuals showing Finnish influence. The similarity with Swedes after 3000-4000 years actually a bit surprises me.  Deeper eigenvectors show a bit more western tendency, though. Pity I have no modern Danish samples to compare with them.  Finnish I1 samples don't differ in any aspect from the modern Finnish population, which is an expected result and shows identical impact of long-term local influence as it has been the case also in Sweden, see the preprint picture where the BA I1 sample group diverges from the ancient Central European sample group.

Preprint Allentoft et al. 2024

The preprint of the study estimates the age of the I1 male population of Southern Scandinavia to be around 4000 years and defines the direction of their arrival as northeast. The time period coincides with the late Scandinavian Neolithic (Scandinavian Dagger Period) and the early Scandinavian Bronze Age. The newcomers are connected to the stone cist burial, a new type of burial common in southern Scandinavia. The burial method in question was common in Gotland as well, and the oldest graves in this area in Estonia are associated with western influences and migration from the west (interestingly, the Gotland saga, Gutasaga, mentions a migration to an island in Estonia, probably to Saaremaa and also to Poland.  Then the Danish prehistorical tradition tells about elite groups who migrated from the north, warred against jutes and beat them.  They formed the root of Danes). Later, the Scandinavian influence decreased in Estonia and a new burial method, the Tarand burial, took its place.

Today's oldest I1 clades based on living human samples are 4600 years old. The oldest I1 samples based on ancient DNA are 7000-7500 years old and were found in Gotland (Stora Förvar 11) and Hungary (BAB5). The Hungarian sample exclusively represents the early European Neolithic population, while the Gotland sample represents mainly local hunter-gatherers, but with a piquant European Neolithic addition. As a side note, Sweden's most common clade, L22, is 3900 years old according to the Yfull website, the main group of Finnish I1 men is 2300 years old and its upstream group is 2800 years old.  Regarding to the Estonian I1 we know only the size of proportion, because so far the research has shed light only on clades of Estonian haplotypes N1 and R1a.  The proportion of Estonian I1 is 15% according to earlier studies.

Stone cist graves in Gotland

Stone cist graves in Estonia

Estonian Tarand graves, usually connected to the Baltic Finnic migration from the east.  Tarand graves followed the stone cist period.  

In Finland, Bronze Age graves are common, there are thousands of discovered Bronze Age graves and stone cairns assumed to be graves, but I could not find maps specific to the grave type. After reading several archaeological studies related to stone cist burials, I am still unsure of their origin and historical chronology. One of the reasons for this may be that archaeologists did basic research in both Finland and Sweden before the digital revolution, and these studies are not available online.

Finnish ydna samples on the autosomal map

In his own abstract, A. Pruessner presents the geographical distribution of the autosomal inheritance of Finnish ydna. I have been waiting for academic research on this topic for a long time. What is being said now about the division of the N haplogroup into eastern and southwestern groups has been known for more than 10 years based on Ftdna's project data, so the presentation does not bring much new information to those interested in the matter. Pruessner's abstract does not say much about the geography of other haplogroups. Of course, for example I1 forms geographical clusters, but mainly from a common Finnish root. On the other hand, the origin of the N1 clusters refers to different angles of entry into the Finnish area. Inspired by Pruessner's presentation, I decided to do a PCA analysis using Finnish samples from the 1000genones project as data. The data includes 38 male samples out of a total of 99 samples. Due to the brevity of the ydna data in the material, I cut the definition to two characters (N1, I1, R1, one I2 removed), even if a more precise result would have been possible in some of the samples. I also did the same test with the narrower Eurogenes data. As a final conclusion, excluding ouliers in R1 and N1, two in both, it can be stated that the autosomal distribution of all yDna groups seems to be more or less similar in the entire Finnish population, although the narrower Eurogenes data points I1 towards Scandinavia and R1 towards Eastern Europe.

Figures:

1 Pruessner's abstract

2 PCA based on Eurogenes global data

3 PCA based on 1000genomes, West Eurasian view

North Europe using Eurogenes G25-coordinates

Too often in studies common heritability and genetic drift are mixed up in a population context. Pretty much research has been ruined this way. This inevitably happens when comparing the heritage of local populations. The Eurogenes coordinate system compares samples in the global coordinate system and eliminates local drift, and by using Eurogenes G25 coordinates, an objective picture of the common inheritance of population groups can be obtained even at the local sample level without the error caused by local genetic drift.

Following plots are made using the original Eurogenes G25 data.  The vertical axis on the three dimensional picture (sticks) shows similarty between Swedish, Finnish and Estonian samples.  East European samples with Siberian admixture (Komi and Chuvash) are taken to the plot to point out the Siberian admixture, gaining the maximum on the PC 1.

Thoughts about the past and the present

 Policy warning. My readers may have noticed that I don't like the enthusiasm with which Finnish genetic research is looking for Finns' ethnic roots in Russia. Unlike language, which has only one root, the genetic heritage is multi-rooted. Genetically, the inhabitants of Finland are a mixture of the southern (Estonia) and eastern (Karelia, Vepsä) Baltic Finno-Ugrians, Scandinavians of different time periods, Sami and increasingly other ethnic groups. These groups, except for the last 30 years of immigration, have been intermingling for hundreds of years. This is forgotten, as was also the case in the Estonian study, which I discussed in my previous post. Geneticists in Finland and Estonia are ideologically very single-minded in their desire to find a multidisciplinary solution by simplifying things. Of course, it is necessary to find out where our language comes from, and linguistics studies that.

Things get more complicated when the Russian view of Finns' roots is added to the previous one. I am unusually well aware that, according to the Russian point of view, the Finno-Ugric peoples living in Russia are called Finns, and Finns as one of them. In reality, the linguistic and ancient genetic roots of the Baltic Finns formed a reasonably homogenous entity that differed from other Finno-Ugric people. Baltic Finnic speakers diverged from other Finno-Ugric language speakers already 1500 years before the Russia as a state was created and formed their own genetic pool.  The political problems between Russia and the West will last, and the ideology of Finnish researchers about the origin of Finns in Russia may weaken the status of the Finno-Ugric people of Russia in their own homeland. We should see the difference between the past and the present, we should not create historical illusions that create problems in the development of communities.

Kivisild 2021

 The study "Patterns of Genetic connectedness between modern and medieval Estonian genomes reveal the Origins of a major ancestry component of the Finnish population", Toomas Kivisild 2021, activates me to examine Estonia's historical connections with Finland. I thought the research was good, but there are still a few exceptions. First of all, the Finnish sample group did not take into account the prehistoric population components of Finns. The Finns by no means moved here from Estonia as a single population. Secondly, and partly due to the previous shortcoming, the study did not comprehensively deal with the uniparental y-heritage. Together, these shortcomings make it difficult to evaluate the results.  Observing the Y-heritage and its datings would have revealed shortcomings in the sample selection.

Finns in Estonia

At the beginning of Swedish rule in 1620, less than 100,000 people lived in Estonia, the small population was due to several wars. The population of Finland was 450,000 in 1650.  The situation in Estonia was difficult and there was a lot immigration from many directions, which had a great effect on the Estonian population.  

In order to get labor faster, the landlords brought new people to the villages, usually exempting the immigrants from all taxes for three years. In this way, peasants moved from less fertile areas to more profitable areas. At that time, about a third of Estonian peasants moved to new settlements. Instead of a destroyed home, they looked for a new one or stayed there, choosing more favorable agricultural lands and also more humane landlords. The conditions for movement were also free, because in some places there was not even a landlord, some of them had moved to a new mansion and did not know the conditions there.

In the second quarter of the 18th century, a large number of representatives of other nations also arrived in Estonia, who make up up to 17% of the peasants of southern Estonia. Among the foreigners, most Russian peasants, craftsmen, merchants and fishermen settled in eastern Estonia.

A large part of the "resettlement" of Estonia was carried out by Finns, who were especially numerous in Virus and Harjumaa, where they were 20% and 12% of the population, concentrated in separate villages. There were also many Finns around Põltsamaa and Tartu. They were partly settled by the state authorities of the Estonian region, partly they left Finland for military service. At first, the Swedish kings forbade the enslavement of Finnish and Swedish peasants who had moved to Estonia, because all forms of slavery were prohibited in Sweden's territory. Over time, this attitude diminished, and the newcomers also had to bear the heavy responsibility of the estate. There were also many Finnish priests in Estonia, because after the expulsion of the Poles, Lutheranism became the main religion. 

The most famous of them was Johann Forselius, whose son was Bengt Gottfried Forselius, who has also been mentioned as the father of the Estonian written language. Contrary to what the Estonian historiography claims, the Forselius family was not Swedish, but Johann was a Finnish-born priest and teacher from the Helsinki municipality. Bengt Forselius died on his way back from Stockholm, where he visited the Swedish king or his representatives. It has been suspected that the Estonian Germans drowned Forselius because they were afraid of civilizing the Estonians, which was feared to lead to the rise of nationalism. Finnish churchmen were also in Latvia, where the Finnish garrison, the Ostrobothnia Regiment, was responsible for the country's defense against the Poles and Lithuanians. A Finnish priest who was hanged in Riga because of his bad habits has remained in the history books of Riga. My ancestors also served in that garrison.

The third large group of newcomers were Latvians, who settled in large numbers, especially around Valga.

Datings

The question of when the Finnish and Estonian languages separated to different parts of the Gulf of Finland has different answers depending on the source, but it is most commonly assumed to have happened between 300-500 AD. On the basis of archaeological finds, this timing can be considered justified, because around 500 AD in Finland, new settlement centers were created in southwestern Finland and Tavastia to the current settlement areas. Later, Tavastia in particular is mentioned in both Swedish and Russian sources as a warlike people, but only the Swedes admit that they suffered losses on military expeditions to Tavastia.

Walter Lang / Homo Fennicus is my recommedation for more information about the prehistory of the Baltic Finnic migrations and languages.

Another report from the Estonian summit

 A 400-year-old discovery of a man's remains in the northeast Finland (Koillismaa, Kuusamo) suggests connections to the Arctic Ocean region. The grave contained a witch's drum hammer, so it is credibly assumed that the man in the grave was a Sámi shaman. It remains unclear whether the man originally belonged to the Sámi people of the Finnish region, because the White Sea had centuries-old connections to the Bothnian Bay (Perämeri) and thus also to Koillismaa, where the grave discovery was made. In the past the population moved more locally than today.