Click any one of these to follow this R1b group's complete path through time

First, a bit of history

The Romans began to withdraw from Britain in 383 A.D. to secure the Empire's borders elsewhere in mainland Europe. By 410 A.D., all Roman troops had been withdrawn, leaving the cities of Britain and the remaining people exposed to outside attack.

"First Saxon warriors raided England's south and east coasts. Little mercy was shown as men, women and children were slaughtered. A British monk Adomnan, suggested a Law of Innocents to protect the women and children. The Saxons appear to have rejected this strange concept! Following these early Saxon raids, from around AD430 a host of Germanic migrants arrived in east and southeast England, the main groups being Jutes from the Jutland peninsula (modern Denmark); Angles from Angeln in southwest Jutland and the Saxons from northwest Germany. Much fun and fighting followed over the next hundred years or so as the invading kings and their armies established their kingdoms. Most of these kingdoms survive to this day, and are perhaps better know as the English counties; Kent (Jutes), Sussex (south Saxons), Wessex (west Saxons), Middlesex (middle Saxons), East Anglia (east Angles)"

"The mighty Midlands kingdom of Mercia (west Angles) grew in importance with its warlike Kink Offa (757-96), established as Bretwalda, or "Britain Ruler" (King of Kings)! On the subject of King of Kings, Christianity also returned to England, following the departure of the Romans, with the arrival of Saint Augustine in Kent in AD597. The Kentish King Ethelbert was converted to the faith. The church and monastery of Lindisfarne, off the Northumbrian coast, was established in AD635." 146

This study was made using markers DYS390, DYS391 (and DYS385a to eliminate the three non-R1b participants who still showed up matching the group even though they are I1). 390 and 391 are both very stable markers.

The Anglo-Saxon sub-clade of R1b is defined with values of 23/11 on alleles 390/391. If one's known ancestry is in the British Isles and one has R1b of this sub-clade, the odds are tilted against that being an "indigenous" R1b and toward being a NW European continental R1b brought to the British Isles by one of the historic invader/immigrant groups from Brussels, Holland, NW Germany, and Denmark. This represents Anglo/Saxon England populations after the Roman occupation ended in 410 AD but before the Norman/Viking populations in the early 1000's A.D. This 23/11 Haplogroup is known as North Sea Baltic. 91

Those who took the laird’s name?

Might this be a possible explanation for those who "took the laird's name?" Over the years, many people have said that folks took the name of the laird on whose land they resided.

Leaving non-paternity events aside, if this group was among the Anglo-Saxon invaders, how might they have acquired the surname if they were not on the Norman lands from where we took our surname about the year 1036 A.D. ? If they were among the invaders between 410 A.D. and 1000 A.D., then they weren't in Normandy to take the surname from the land. The 24/11 AMH group would have been in Normandy at this time. So, what possibilities are there for their acquisition of the surname?

Keep in mind that little can be said with complete certainty. The 23/11 North Sea Baltic mutation is believed to have occurred about 21,000 - 25,000 years ago. This means these people could have easily been mingled in amongst the 24/11 group in Western Europe and may not have joined the invading group. Certainly not all the 23/11s joined the invaders. Perhaps they stayed in Western Europe, acquired the surname and came over with or just after the Conqueror.

S21 divides this group

At the current time, we have twenty-one members of our project falling into this group. Some show the S21 mutation but not all have been tested. None of this group fall precisely within the AMH, mainly because they’re not 24 on DYS390. If all were tested by EthnoAncestry and some did not show S21+, then we’d know that S21 is a marker that’s downstream of this Anglo-Saxon Invader mutation. But, so far, that's not the case.

It’s very interesting that our old Lineage 4 almost all show 23/11. Currently, this lineage has 14 members, quite large. Of the 21 total participants of our DNA project who show 23/11, eleven are members of our Lineage 4. I think it’s safe to say that those members of Lineage 4 are all going back to this mutation that occurred about 3,900 years ago.

23/11 but not very close in DNA

A couple folks who are part of this Anglo-Saxon Invader group still don’t match closely to the others. One is only matching on 10/12 and 17/25 makers. Yet both are S21+. A Losnegard family member is 24/25 and 20/25 from this group. They have not been tested for S21. I have no way to account for these distances as yet.

Why this is so exciting

Rarely do we get DNA research that tells us something as recent as 1000 A.D. all by itself with no documents research. A.A. Foster’s geographical data point is unbelievably useful to us in our research. If Foster is right, then the proximity in both time and geography to the Norman Invasion is simply wonderful information for our project.

There’s a good deal more to learn about this. We’ll have to keep focusing here to compare this lineage with others. For instance, My lineage, Lineage 1, is 1/12 and 4/25 from Lineage 4. However, one of those markers that’s off is DYS390, a stable marker. That said, any marker can mutate at any time, but I doubt this one has in any recent timeframe.

Ah, the Goths

Think of all the people of the world who were inspired by the long history of the Goths. A connection to them is like an express train to antiquity, and people are still trying to get aboard this train. The Swedes, the Germans, the Spanish, so many societies saw the advantage of a connection to this group. Clearly, we have some folks who connect to the Visigoths. But before everyone gets too excited, know that here too it’s easy to over-simplify.
First, the Goths’ history as the oldest traceable line of descent in Europe is based almost entirely on the writings of Jordanes. And, to a “considerable extent, Jordanes created his Gothic history by incorporating the histories of other peoples as though they were part of the Goth’s own past. His readers did not recognize this fact...” And many of them still don't.  80, p. 11-12

I don’t see a long history of dynastic succession among the Gothic peoples. For instance, in Anglo-Saxon England, the Witan (or Witenagemot) chose the king. There was no such thing as dynastic succession. The name Witan derives from the Old English “itena emÿt,” or witena gemÿt, for "meeting of wise men." 91  It had its roots in the Folkmoot, which likely was handed to them from the early Goths.

The important thing for our project to understand here is that trying to trace bloodlines in Anglo-Saxon England via DNA through Anglo-Saxon ruling dynasties is a waste of time. And the problems of claiming dynastic descent with the Visigoths were not limited to England. Certainly, on continental Europe, this may be more possible as some leaders of the Visigoths had a royal family, the Balthi. Tthe famous sacker of Rome, Alaric, was descended of this family. 80, p. 321

Supposedly the Visigoths were led by the Balthi and the Ostrogoths were led by the Amals.  80, p. 321  She goes on to point out that Alaric, a descendant of the Balthi family, had no sons and we don’t have any way of knowing which family or families Athaulf, Segeric, Vallia, or Theoderid I (the four kings who followed) came from. Once again, how do we look for descent from the Visigoths?

Nicolaus Ragvaldi (born in the early 1380s and died on February 17, 1448) was bishop of Växjö and from 1438-1448 archbishop of Uppsala, Sweden. On November 12, 1434, he held a speech at the council of Basel, where he argued that the Swedish monarch, Eric of Pomerania, was a successor to the Gothic kings, and that the Swedish delegation deserved senior rank. 91  This early claim shows the importance of the claims of kings and gives a good view of the lengths these people would go to in order to gain power. The debate at the Council of Basle made quite an impression on delegates from other countries who carried this story home and formulated their own connections to the Goths. This new invention of Gothicism would come to influence the thinking of people to this day.

Christensen’s work is summarized here and, in my opinion, this book should be ordered by anyone in our Visigoth lineage. “A study of the myth of the origins and early history of the Goths as told in the Getica written by Jordanes in AD 551. Jordanes claimed they emigrated from the island of Scandza (Sweden) in 1490 BC, thus giving them a history of more than two thousand years. He found this narrative in Cassiodorus' Gothic history, which is now lost. The present study demonstrates that Cassiodorus and Jordanes did not base their accounts on a living Gothic tradition of the past, as the Getica would have us believe. On the contrary, they got their information from the Greco-Roman literature only. The Greeks and Romans, however, did not know of the Goths till the middle of the third century AD. Consequently, Cassiodorus and Jordanes created a Gothic history partly through an erudite exploitation of the names of foreign peoples, partly by using the narratives about other peoples' history as if they belonged to the Goths. The history of the Migrations therefore must be reconsidered.”

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