Although maritime raiding has been a constant of seafaring cultures for millennia, the Viking Age is partly defined by this activity. However, the
exact nature and composition of Viking war parties is unknown. One raiding or diplomatic expedition has left direct archaeological traces:
at Salme in Estonia, 41 men from Sweden who died violently were buried in two boats, accompanied by high-status weaponry. Importantly,
the Salme boat burial predates the first textually documented raid (on Lindisfarne (England) in 793) by nearly half a century.
Kinship analysis of the genomes of 34 individuals from the Salme burial reveals 4 brothers buried side by side and a third-degree relative of 1 of the 4 brothers (Supplementary Note 4). The ancestry profiles of the Salme individuals were similar to one another when compared to the
profiles of other burials of the Viking Age (Supplementary Notes 10, 11), which suggests a relatively genetically homogeneous group of people
of high status (including close kin).The five Salme relatives are not the only kin in our dataset; we also identified two pairs of kin in which the related individuals were exca-vated hundreds of kilometres apart from each other, which markedly illustrates the mobility of individuals during the Viking Age
Ничего неизвестно про Викинговые войны. Салме раньше считавшегося первым рейда в Линдисфарне почти на пол столетия.
4 брата высокого статуса и родственники третьего порядка в Салме говорит о гомогенной генетической группе высокого статуса включая ответвления семьи.