Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It

by Janina Ramírez

This was certainly the case in towns connected by the Hanseatic League, but during the period of Viking expansion there were also many people moving and being moved from Asia, the Middle East and northern Africa into Europe and vice versa. There is even a reference to Vikings in Newfoundland returning with two Native American children, who may have settled and ultimately entered the gene pool in Iceland.14 In 2011 a DNA feature (C1e) was identified in the Icelandic population which is not of European or Asian origin, and may have arrived with a Native American woman around the year AD 1000.15 Enslaved people moved in multiple directions and came from different ethnic backgrounds. While some historians maintain that ‘there were no slaves in northern Europe in the late-medieval period, let alone black ones,’ this simply was not the case.16