Goths, runes, Vikings and Witings | R-YP350 hypothesis by R. Derdziński

A movie by SurviveTheJive

 

[The continuation of this story can be found here. The Tolkien family terminal SNP (Y-DNA) is R1a > Z92 > Y42738*]

 

When the Tolkien family still lived in Gdańsk, and two brothers - Daniel and John Benjamin - had already established their family and businesses in London, my great-great-great-grandfather Marcin Dyrdziński (born as Marcin Dyrda, son of Wojciech, a craftsman and farmer in Budy Lancuckie) was a weaver guild member in Przeworsk. The Tolkiens and the Dyrdziński (soon the Derdziński) had the most recent common ancestror (tMRCA) at least in the Bronze Age, and perhaps even in the Middle Ages. And their distant relatives were the early medieval Vikings (as shown by the archeological examples from Bodzia and Gotland). I show it on my diagram. Look carefully!

My Y-DNA is already known. About the Tolkiens we know that they probably belonged to "my" clan R1a-YP351. Perhaps someday we will get to know their more precise SNPs? (The continuation of this story can be found here. The Tolkien family terminal SNP (Y-DNA) is R1a > Z92 > Y42738*). And now my brave hypothesis about our ancestry, which can be seen as thrilling when we remember about J. R. R. Tolkien's love of the Gothic language, the runes, the Vikings, and the sagas...

Read also: 

• 442 Ancient Viking Skeletons Hold DNA Surprises – Does Your Y or Mitochondrial DNA Match? Daily Updates Here!
• Baltic ancestry of Prof. Tolkien confirmed! The Tolkiens' Y-DNA is West Baltic R1a-Z92 
• Tolkienowie z Sambii oraz wikiński wątek genetyczny...

The migrations of our ancestors according to SNP Tracker uncertainty mode
(orange and red are medieval and modern times)

*       *       *

CLAN R-YP350 hypothesis

 

The paths of the YP351 "clan"

So, I am thinking about my Y-DNA line (R1a-Y42738), looking at these two 10th-11th century gentlemen from our "clan", the only ancient DNA remains in this YP351 subgroup. They are full-blooded Swedish Vikings related to Gotland, a big island on Baltic Sea. One of them is VK64 and the other is VK156, a Viking who was buried with a langsax sword in Bodzia, Poland in the grave no. E58 (the beginning of the 11th.). These people do not have Baltic nor Slavic autosomes (see the diagram below). VK156 seems to be a descendant of ... the Goths (!), He has a dominant Ostrogoth admixture. Gotland, where both relatives probably came from (VK64 and VK156), is the part of the Baltic area from where the historic Goths probably came.

 

"Our" Vikings including VK156 who seems a descendant of the Goths
(according to MyTrueAncestry)

The Goths probably assimilated the conquered Baltic peoples in the times of King Ermanaric, including the Æstii, and perhaps the ancestors of both our Vikings were such Germanized Æstii.  (It could also happen later, in the Pre-Viking Vendel Age) In the article on the Vikings (see here) we can read that "many Viking Age individuals from the island of Gotland cluster with Bronze Age individuals from the Baltic region, which indicates mobility across the Baltic Sea"

The Swedish Vikings took part not only in the founding of Rus' (as Prince Rurik's Rus-Vikings), but also Yotvingia, because the name of the Yotvingians may come from a Viking chieftain, Jatvigr (Eadwig in Old English). They probably took also part in the founding of Poland (hence the Viking cemeteries from the times of Mieszko and Bolesław in Kałdus, Bodzia and other places).

It was probably from such Gotland Vikings that the nobles in Prussia, the so-called Witings emerged. Many tolks, i.e. negotiators/translators from the times of the conquest of Prussia by the Teutonic Order, also came from the Witings. Hence probably the tradition of the name of Professor Tolkien, who came from the Natangian village leaders from the vicinity of Kreutzburg in the 16th c. (it seems that the Tolkien family is also in our "clan" YP351 - but we need now more detailed DNA tests).

 

Similarities of VK156 to other samples
(according to MyTrueAncestry)

 

SUMMARY:

Me, and Tolkiens, and my "clan"'s kinsmen from Norway, Belarus, Russia, Sweden and Poland come from the Y-DNA R1a-YP350 line, which may be (according to the above hypothesis) at the beginning of our era present among the Goths and Æstii, then among the Swedish Vikings (Varangians), then among the Prussian and Yotvingian nobles, the so-called Witings and in the Polish-Lithuanian times among the nobility descended from these Baltic nobles, e.g. the families of Skłodowski, Nienałtowski, Radziwiłłowicz, the Dyrda (if my Dyrda-Derdziński really come from the noble Dyrda of the Kościesza coat-of-arms - I must genetically investigate this).

 

Polish nobles in our "clan" (by courtesy of Łukasz Łapiński)