Vikings did not live up to their reputation as violent sex-mad marauders, a new study of the genes that made Britain suggests.
The wild men from the north may have done a fair amount of pillaging, but when it came to rape - or even consensual sex - the evidence indicates a different story.
The Vikings, from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, carried out extensive raids and occupations across wide areas of northern and central Europe between the eighth and late 11th centuries.
Danish Vikings in particular took over large parts of England, eventually settling in an a region stretching from Essex to County Durham which was ruled by "Danelaw".
New analysis of thousands of DNA samples from the UK, continental Europe and Scandinavia has revealed a surprising lack of Viking genes in England, despite the Norsemen once occupying much of the country.
The revelations by an international team, led by scientists from Oxford University and the Wellcome Trust, have been published in the journal Nature.
"While many of the historical migration events leave signals in our data, they have had a smaller effect on the genetic composition of UK populations than has sometimes been argued," the team said.
The findings support previous research from the University of Oslo suggesting that Viking men were family-oriented and not particularly bothered about the British women they conquered.
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