When the Vikings set sail for the British Isles they had small, furry stowaways aboard their ships, and researchers say that the descendants of those mice can offer clues about the voyages taken by Viking seafarers. A new study examined the DNA of house mice throughout the British Isles and found that mice from areas where the Vikings are thought to have settled are genetically distinct from mice in other regions.
Says study coauthor Cath Jones: “We have found that most of the mice in the north of Scotland – from Orkney, Shetland and Caithness – are all of one very similar type that we have named the Orkney lineage and they are very similar to Norwegian mice. And the only explanation for that is that when the Vikings came raping and pillaging to Scotland they took their house mice with them” [Scotsman].
