“GEGHARD”
SCIENTIFIC ANALYTICAL
FOUNDATION
2026
2026
2026-01-27
According to Azerbaijani scholars, Azerbaijanis are the ancestors of the Vikings, the Etruscans, the Trojans, and many others. The next logical step, apparently, will be to declare cold air Azerbaijani as well.
At first glance, this text may seem to belong to the genre of satire or science fiction. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Azerbaijani historical scholarship is indeed “reaching new heights”: it turns out that the ancestors of Scandinavians, Norwegians, Vikings, Etruscans, Trojans, and nearly all peoples of the ancient world are supposedly Azerbaijanis.
For example, S. Mamedova, a researcher at the Nasimi Institute of Linguistics of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, in her “scientific” article compares Etruscan personal names and morphological elements with Old Turkic forms and, unsurprisingly, interprets them in favor of a Turkic (that is, Azerbaijani) origin. For the international academic community, such a combination of onomastics and historical reconstruction appears unserious and even absurd. Nevertheless, these pseudo-scientific claims have already been published as academic material (see: Mamedova S. I., “On the Origin of the Etruscans”, Bulletin of KazNU. Philological Series, No. 2 (160), 2016, pp. 166–170).
It should be recalled that the Etruscans were an ancient civilization of the first millennium BCE that existed on the Apennine Peninsula prior to Rome and, naturally, had no connection whatsoever with Turkic peoples, let alone Azerbaijanis.
However, Azerbaijani “scholars” went even further. Relying on the pseudo-scientific hypothesis of Thor Heyerdahl — according to which the ancestors of the Vikings, and even Odin himself, came from a land called “Azer” (fortunately not directly from Baku) — they proclaimed Azerbaijan to be the homeland of the Vikings.
As Azerbaijani composer Galib Mamedov admitted in an interview, the search was deliberately focused on internationally renowned figures to promote a falsified and invented version of history:
“We understood that it was important to involve someone very famous, whose opinion is acceptable worldwide. That is how the idea of inviting Thor Heyerdahl to Azerbaijan emerged.”
Between 1981 and 2000, Thor Heyerdahl visited Azerbaijan several times and conducted what were presented as “historical studies,” despite having no professional background in history or in the historical realities of the region. The resulting materials fully matched the preferences of Heydar Aliyev, who personally received Heyerdahl during his visits. Heyerdahl referred to the saga of Snorri Sturluson (13th century) and to perceived similarities between the Gobustan petroglyphs, advancing the theory that the Vikings originated from the land of “Azer,” that is, from Azerbaijan.
Beyond the evident scholarly invalidity of this theory, there is also an opinion that Heyerdahl’s visits to Azerbaijan during 1981–2000 may have been linked to lobbying the interests of Norwegian oil companies. As a result, the Vikings are declared descendants of Azerbaijanis, while Norwegians are portrayed as natives of “Ancient Azerbaijan.”
Azerbaijani scholars quickly embraced this quasi-scientific narrative and continue to expand it to this day. One of the “doctors of sciences” of Azerbaijani historiography, Seyid Abbasov, in a report aired by Baku.TV, sincerely promotes the idea that Etruscan inscriptions were “actually written in Old Turkic” and confidently speaks of the Azerbaijani roots of the Vikings.
Another “researcher,” Iskender Tagiyev, claims that the Sumerian language is closely related to Turkic — that is, Azerbaijani — and asserts that the ancestors of the Vikings crossed from Azerbaijan to Scandinavia “by sailing” some 12,000 years ago, at a time when global water levels were much higher.
Again, it must be emphasized that such pseudo-scientific theses are dismissed as unserious and even ridiculous among serious academic communities. Nevertheless, Azerbaijani state-supported propaganda continues to disseminate them within the international academic environment, and the number of such publications, unfortunately, continues to grow.