The Salme Ship Warriors

Two ships buried at Salme hold about forty Scandinavian warriors who died in battle around 750 CE — the earliest known Viking-style raid, a generation before Lindisfarne. Among them lay four brothers, side by side, and a leader with a jeweled sword hilt; the sagas remember a Swedish king's raid on these very shores. Their genomes tie the crews to the Mälaren valley of central Sweden.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in Population genomics of the Viking world.

Every Ancestrify Global25 report includes the free Notable Matches lens: your coordinates are compared to every sequenced member of every catalog entry, and the distance to the closest member is reported — a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional space the Distance lens uses. Because these are a small group of real individuals, not a population average, distances naturally run larger than population distances — that is expected, not a poor result. And one thing is never claimed: a small distance means similar ancestry composition, not that the Salme Ship Warriors are your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about the full G25 analysis.

• 01

  Who were the Salme Ship Warriors?

  The Salme Ship Warriors (c. 750 CE, Salme, Saaremaa, Estonia) are one of the Historical figures entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 12 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "Population genomics of the Viking world".

• 02

  What does "matching" the Salme Ship Warriors mean?

  Your Global25 coordinates are compared to the entry's sequenced members and the distance to the closest one is reported — a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional reference space the Distance lens uses. A notable entry is one person or one small burial group, not a population average, so distances naturally run larger than population distances.

• 03

  Are they my ancestor?

  No — and no DNA test can show that. A small distance means your genome sits near theirs in a shared reference space: similar ancestry composition, not descent. Ancestrify never claims a notable individual is your ancestor or relative.

• 04

  How do I see my own distance to the Salme Ship Warriors?

  Notable Matches is a free lens on every Ancestrify Global25 report — never sold separately. Order the G25 analysis (29.99 EUR), and your report ranks your coordinates against the full catalog, with a portrait, dossier and map for every entry. The public demo shows the lens with example data.

The catalog holds every published entry across three tiers — browse the full Notable Matches directory. Nearby entries:

• Bishop Teodomiro of Iria Flaviad. 847 CE

• The Kunbábony Avar Khagan630–670 CE

• The Birka Warrior Woman10th century CE

• Empress Ashina551–582 CE

• Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou543–578 CE

• Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary1040–1095 CE

• Árpád Royals of the Székesfehérvár Basilica9th–12th century CE

• Prince Gleb Svyatoslavich1052–1078 CE

• King Béla III of Hungary1148–1196 CE

• Prince Izyaslav Ingvarevichc. 1180–1223 CE

• The Well-man of Sverresborgd. 1197 CE

• The Princess of Hasslebenc. 300 CE