A chara, – I refer to the report "Brown hair, dark features: DNA evidence recasts Irish view of Vikings" (News, September 17).
According to this news item, new DNA evidence challenges the commonly held view of the Vikings as being exclusively blonde-haired and blue-eyed.
I recall learning in history class in school some 60 years ago that the Irish distinguished between two categories of Vikings: fionnghaill (fair-haired foreigners) and dubhghaill (dark-haired foreigners). We were further told that the former came from Denmark and the latter from Norway, as the scientific evidence has confirmed in your report.
We now have a county council in the north Dublin area, Fingal, named after the first of these groups.
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So I don’t think we needed modern scientific techniques to establish this distinction, although they can add additional detail. – Is mise,
PROINNSIAS
BREATHNACH,
Maynooth, Co Kildare.