The Nordic strain in the Russian gene comes from the Varangians- Swedish vikings who occupied and ruled the lands of modern Russia, Ukraine, Belarus in the middle ages, from their stronghold in Kievan Rus. Obviously, thus cross-pollinating their DNA with the local Slavic tribes.
My father always said if you scratch a Russian you will find a tatar - an obvious reference to the Golden Horde's occupation of Russian and the resultant mixing of slavic and mogol genes. I find that quite a few Russians have faint Asiatic features, including some relatives from my maternal side.
Bottom line - what we generally call the East Slavic people are undoubtedly a brew of genes from the ancient native Slavic tribes of the steppes and northern forests, the Swedish Viking occupiers, the mongols of the Golden Horde, and God knows what else - probably some Turkic and Siberian tribes as well. That may be one reason Hitler considered the East Slavs to be an inferior mongrel race, polluted with Asiatic genes. Apparently Hitler was willing to spare the Slavs that - to the Germans - appeared to be descended from the Swedish Varangians.
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