But the oxygen isotopes suggest a colder childhood climate than southern England typically produces.

The North Sea world he inhabited had options for such a background.

Scandinavian settlement in the Humber region had been substantial since the Viking Age.

The Danelaw, the region of England under Danish law and settlement from the late ninth century onward, included Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, the counties on either side of the Humber.

Family names, place names, and linguistic patterns throughout the region reflected generations of Scandinavian presence.

A man whose childhood oxygen signature suggests colder climates need not have been born in Scandinavia itself.