I have contacted A. Bergqvist, who is a Y-12 match with my father. He has the I-Y83335 haplogroup on FTDNA and I-FGC22046 on YFull. I explained to him that we are searching for the Scandinavian ancestor of the Balkan I-P109 haplogroup branch. And since he (alongside Rolf Johansson) is the closest genetic match of this branch, his Big Y matches and Y-111/Y-67 matches could be of interest in solving this genealogical enigma.
He acknowlegded that this ancestor is indeed a puzzle to be solved and he told me if I had thought about the Crusades. Actually, I did, but the majority of the crusaders of Scandinavian origin were Normans.
We know that Normans lived in France (Normandy) and Italy (Sicily), where they had created states. So, their I1 haplogroups must be found there. If the Scandinavian ancestor of the Balkan branch was a Norman, then his haplogroup could be found in Normandy or Sicily, or more broadly in France or Italy. But at this time, there is no Frenchman or Italian that has a haplogroup closely related to the one of the Balkan branch (I-FGC22045). The only two closely related persons, A. Bergqvist and Rolf Johansson (currently I-FGC22048) are in Sweden and nowhere else. There are matches of English origin, of probable Norman descent, but they are not closely related to the Balkan branch. This favors the Varangian hypothesis, because we know that the Varangians went on their commercial trips directly from Sweden to the Balkans.
However, since he reminded me about the Crusades, I went and read again the article on the English Wikipedia.
To my surprise I discovered that there is a little Crusade that involved Scandinavians (not Normans) that went to the Balkans. It is the Norwegian Crusade (1107-1111), that involved the king Sigurd and 5000 Scandinavians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_CrusadeIt seems that many of those that survived the trip stayed in Constantinople. Those who did not, took three years to return on land through the Balkans to Norway. It is very possible that along the route some chose to stay in the Balkans. One of them could be the ancestor of the Balkan branch of I-P109.
==================
Sigurd planned to return to Norway over land, but many of his men stayed behind in Constantinople, to take up service for the emperor as part of his Varangian Guard. The trip took three years and he visited many countries en route. Sigurd traveled from Serbia and Bulgaria, through Hungary, Pannonia, Swabia and Bavaria where he met with the Emperor Lothar II of the Holy Roman Empire. He later arrived in Denmark where he was greeted by King Niels of Denmark, who eventually gave him a ship in which to sail to Norway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigurd_the_Crusader===================
So, now there is a new hypothesis concerning how a branch of the I-FGC22048 haplogroup arrived in the Balkans.
I asked A. Bergqvist to send me his FTDNA and YFull matches. At this time he has sent only the FTDNA matches as CSV files. These files can be opened with LibreOffice and OpenOffice, which are free, or with Microsoft Office.
Bergqvist has only one Big-Y match, who is also a Y-111 match (Genetic Distance=5), named A. Welander, who has exactly the same haplogroup as A.K. Bergqvist. If you click on the Country Report option on the FTDNA haplotree, you can see that there are two Swedes with the I-Y83335 haplogroup. Until now, I didn’t know who was the other Swede, because he’s not a Y-STR match with my father.
Bergqvist also has 32 Y-67 matches with the genetic distance of 4 or 5 steps (GD=4 or 5). I told him that if he upgrades from Big Y-500 to Big Y-700, maybe some of these Y-67 matches would also be Big Y matches. From these Y-67 matches, only one is from the Balkans, V. Lukic.
You can download his Big Y and Y-67 matches from my Google Drive account:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ahLI-7rrBkiU_9fHg1KBuDatZ1UhdgzC/view?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/file/d/16w_VmWPsrVpCLvMqfzSTDOL_BfeylKSf/view?usp=sharingYou can see that in the CSV file that there are more Big Y matches listed aside Welander. However, although these matches (including V. Lukic) are closely related to A. Bergqvist, they have more than 30 SNP differences (private variants + named SNPs), so they are not considered “true” Big Y matches by FTDNA. Welander is the only match who has the SNP differences (total number = 23) listed.
https://dna-explained.com/2020/05/30/y-dna-step-by-step-big-y-analysis/https://help.familytreedna.com/hc/en-us/articles/4402696079887-Big-Y-Matching-Matches-Guide- P.S.
I have discovered a Russian genetic genealogy forum.
Here is the I1 haplogroup section:
https://forum.molgen.org/index.php/board,8.0.html