 Family Tree DNA: Genetic Testing Service Danish, Swedish, German, English, and members of other ethnic groups should sign up with this site to learn how they're related to other families and ethnic groups. Administrators invite people with bonafide Danish ancestry in their Y-DNA and/or mtDNA lineages to participate in the "Denmark DNA Project" as well as the "Danish Demes Regional DNA Project" administered by Diana Matthiesen. |
Danish people live in the southern Scandinavian country of Denmark, located to the north of Germany and in the Southern Schleswig region of Germany. Their language is in the North Germanic family and is closely related to Norwegian and Swedish. In the 9th century, Danes were among the fearsome Vikings who travelled by sea to conquer northeastern England and northern France to rule regions that became known as the Danelaw and Normandy respectively.
Especially common Y-DNA (paternal) haplogroups in the "Danish Demes Regional DNA Project" include I1, I1d and I1d1, I2, R1a, and R1b (and subhaplogroups like R1b1a2a1a1a4 which is also known as R-L48), and less common haplogroups include ones within the broad letter groups E, F, G, J, N, Q.
In the "Denmark DNA Project", Y-DNA haplogroups in Denmark-origin lineages include E1b1b1a1b, I2b1, I1, I1d1, J2a4b3, Q1a3, R1a1a, R1b1a2, R1b1a2a1a1, R1b1a2a1a1b4, and certain others.
Y-DNA I1 originated in northern Europe, probably Denmark itself, and is typically found among the Nordic peoples of Scandinavia (Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders) and in northern Germany. It is also very common in western Finland.
In the "Danish Demes Regional DNA Project" common mtDNA (maternal) haplogroups are H (including subhaplogroups like H2a2a and H5a1) and U (including the subhaplogroups U5b1 and U5b2), while less common ones include J, K (including subhaplogroups like K1c1b and K1c2), T, and V.
Monica Leu, Keith Humphreys, Ida Surakka, Emil Rehnberg, Juha Muilu, Päivi Rosenström, Peter Almgren, Juha Jääskeläinen, Richard P. Lifton, Kirsten Ohm Kyvik, Jaakko Kaprio, Nancy L. Pedersen, Aarno Palotie, Per Hall, Henrik Grönberg, Leif Groop, Leena Peltonen, Juni Palmgren, and Samuli Ripatti. "NordicDB: a Nordic pool and portal for genome-wide control data." European Journal of Human Genetics 18 (2010): pages 1322-1326. Published online on July 28, 2010. Table 1 indicates that the "GenomEUtwin-DK" study contributed 173 samples from "Denmark Females; age range 20-80 years" and a total of 318212 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs). Figure 1a displays genetic variation between the Danish, Swedish, and Finnish populations with 161 Danish samples included there in yellow color. Another version of the same genetic variation map is here. As one would expect, most of the Danish samples cluster close to one another, but some overlap with Swedes too.
Excerpt from the Abstract:"The current version of NordicDB pools together high-density genome-wide SNP information from ~5000 controls originating from Finnish, Swedish and Danish studies and shows country-specific allele frequencies for SNP markers."
Siiri Rootsi, Natalie M. Myres, Alice A. Lin, Mari Järve, Roy J. King, Ildus A. Kutuev, Vicente M. Cabrera, Elza K. Khusnutdinova, Kärt Varendi, Hovhannes Sahakyan, Doron M. Behar, Rita Khusainova, Oleg Balanovsky, Elena Balanovska, Pavao Rudan, Levon Yepiskoposyan, Ardeshir Bahmanimehr, Shirin Farjadian, Alena Kushniarevich, Rene J. Herrera, Viola Grugni, Vincenza Battaglia, Carmela Nici, Francesca Crobu, Sena Karachanak, Baharak Hooshiar Kashani, Massoud Houshmand, Mohammad H. Sanati, Draga Toncheva, Antonella Lisa, Ornella Semino, Jacques Chiaroni, Julie Di Cristofaro, Richard Villems, Toomas Kivisild, and Peter A. Underhill. "Distinguishing the co-ancestries of haplogroup G Y-chromosomes in the populations of Europe and the Caucasus." European Journal of Human Genetics Forthcoming in print. First published online on May 16, 2012. Supplementary Table 1 indicates that 2 of the 110 males from Denmark newly tested in the study, only 1.8%, belonged to the Y-DNA haplogroup G, and both of them had the subclade mutation G-L497 that's also found in nearby Germany (among other places). G originated far to the southeast of Denmark so it's not surprising that it's uncommon among the Danes.
3 Danes participated in the genetic cluster study "Genetic structure in North-Central Europe with the Galore approach (revisited)" (April 1, 2011). The cluster where all 3 Danes belong (called #9 here) was also found among the sole Dutch participant as well as many British and Irish people and some French people. The data was retrieved from the 1000 Genomes Project, the Dodecad Project, the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), and a published paper by Behar et al. (2010).
Medieval Danish DNA was tested in the studies "mtDNA analysis of human remains from an early Danish Christian cemetery." (Kongemarken cemetery) and "Danish Viking DNA Retrieved" (Galdegil burial site).
