His mother, a Scottish immigrant, hailed from the highlander Clan MacLeod on the Isle of Lewis, one of the Outer Hebrides islands off the western shore of Scotland that was raided and settled by Vikings during the 9th through 13th centuries, when it belonged to the Norse Kingdom of the Isles. In fact, the MacLeods ruled Lewis from the end of the Viking heyday through the early modern era, when they were eclipsed by the Mackenzies in the 17th C.
Genetic evidence points to their Norse invader lineage. From an article discussing the Y-chromosome that belongs to nearly half of MacLeod men:
It is found in Lewis, Harris and Skye, core Macleod territory, but also in Orkney, Shetland and Norway, with a few examples in Sweden. Despite extensive screening, S68 is very specifically located, showing up only once in the east of Scotland and once in England. This is a classic pattern for a Viking marker in Britain, but one much rarer than M17. MacLeods determinedly claim descent from a common name father, a Norse aristocrat called Ljot, a relative of Olaf, King of Man. They are probably right to continue to claim that – science for once supporting tradition.
In their homeland at the dawn of the nation-state, the Vikings were rounded up and drowned at sea by the ancestors of today's Scandinavian weenies who love big government solutions and follow harm-based morality. Where they settled in Scotland, they intermarried and kept their genes flowing albeit at diluted levels. And even when they lost power, it was to other warrior types (Celtic, though, rather than Nordic) who bested them in battle, and who did not exterminate them after victory.
There was no powerful modern nation-state on the rise in the remote areas of Scotland, so there was no force there to carry out a cleansing of the coarser Medieval elements that a nice new nation-state would not want getting in the way of centralized power.
The Norsemen may have failed to secure a foothold in North America one-thousand years ago, but they may be vindicated yet with the election of the first Viking President.
> In their homeland at the dawn of the nation-state, the Vikings were rounded up and drowned at sea
ReplyDeleteDo you some reference for this?
In b4 someone makes the first Highlander reference.
ReplyDeleteI would also be curious to read more about how the vikings were eliminated
ReplyDeleteThat brings up an interesting question. Who are the Norman presidents? John Quincy Adams was Norman on his mother's side (Quincy being a distinguished Norman surname). Jimmy Carter may also have Norman ancestry, as Carter seems common among both Saxon and Norman. Research shows after almost 1000 years, people with Norman surnames are still wealthier and more educated than those with Anglo-Saxon surnames.
ReplyDeleteUnrelated to this post, but interesting none the less.
ReplyDeleteThe rise and fall of quicksand. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/08/terra_infirma.2.html
It is unusual for a non-Jew to make it big in NYC real estate. So that means he had to substitute real achievements for connections.
ReplyDeleteMany tough peoples elect wet liberal governments - there are plenty of tough people in Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Scotland, the northern United States and other frontier areas of the West yet they tend to elect very wet politicians.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem is feminism - in western countries where the men are physically tough the women tend to be socially assertive and bossy.
Another problem is that people descended from hunter-gatherers tend to be more socially and politically trusting than people descended from farmers.