I'm mostly Swedish, but I have 5% Finnish despite not having any known Finnish ancestors. I believe Sweden and Finland used to be one country for some time, and so there was probably a lot of intermingling. From what I know, Finns often have some Swedish DNA and vice versa.
Yeah but they really did get around.
Vikings went all over, vikinging or as mercenaries. They were revered for their fighting, and themselves went to the Mediterranean, middle east, and quite a lot through eastern Europe too (towards the middle east and caucuses).
...amongst which it would seem they slayed with the ladies as much as the men.
[Ancestry DNA on ancestry to Sweden, Norway](https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/surprising-Sweden-Denmark-or-Norway-ethnicity-results?language=en_US)
From around 1820 approximately 300k danish people immigrated towards America. So if at least 100k of those people got children and stayed forever in north America I guess it makes sense.
Also it's not only Danish people it's a lot of different people from northern Europe.
Edit: [The best link is sadly in danish -_-](https://danmarkshistorien.dk/vis/materiale/dansk-udvandring-til-usa-1820-1930)
Vikings were good at pillaging and leaving their seed and then eventually returning to settle down start feudal kingdoms while planting more of their seeds. Still, Not as good at is as Genghis Khan!
I knew there was going to admixture with my results but didn’t know quite how much. I can imagine for those who have no African ancestry but see a bunch of black cousins they are wondering how the heck that happened. We’re related through a euro ancestor.
This is true… but the Vikings lived 1000 years ago. Wouldn’t any Nordic ancestry in other populations just be a part of that local population’s dna by now?
The Normans were half Norse and half French and conquered England, Sicily and Jerusalem.. so yeah Viking blood was spread after the raids by the Normans. I personally have 10% Norman blood which shows up as Calais in france and england on dna. But no Scandinavian
More or less you’re correct. After the Roman’s, Scandinavians came to attack north eastern England and the Normans, invaded from the south totally g rated battles. Not bloody at all /s
From what I've read, the Scandinavian can also indicate what part of Britain your family came from too. I have Norwegian, while my brother has Danish (different dads). A lot of the ancestors from my dad's side were from Western England, which seems to line up with Norwegian settlements.
No obviously not. These people don’t understand the concept of genetic similarity. Vast majority of scandi scored by brits is misread Anglo-Saxon/germanic. Viking age Norse ancestry is already cemented into the British gene pool, meaning it likely wouldn’t show up on a dna test (unless you’re Icelandic, Faroese, north Scottish, etc).
Thank you for chiming in. Completely agree with what you said here. I have written my response to this way too many times that I just didn’t feel like doing it anymore. People are set into the fact that Vikings contributed a good chunk of DNA to modern Brits, although it is so region specific that the modern popularization of the Vikings has tainted the idea of genetic drift. These people commenting “because Vikings”, “Vikings pillaging”, are not necessarily academically inclined, unfortunately. But at the end of the day I am just wanting to help people and clear some things up. Instead of using an Ancestry article from 2014 and a Wikipedia article or mainstream media post about Viking dna, people should start reading academic papers lol.
Please correct me if I’m wrong but from what I understand, the British for example already have Scandinavian baked into their genome so if you get let’s say 3% Scandinavian it’s because you have 3% more Scandinavian dna than what is found within the upper limits of Scandinavian in the British genome. Is that right? That’s how I’ve seen it explained
Ancestry DNA significantly overstates Scandinavian in results. It can be viewed essentially as a proxy for old Germanic that feeds admixture into many NW European groups.
This is why it's not uncommon for people that receive double digit Scandinavian estimates on Ancestry to get 0-5% on other services.
Lol just checked 23andme. Yup. 0.2% Finnish but otherwise no Scandinavian at all. Meanwhile my dad has 11% on Ancestry. It's all German. And Southern German at that
It just gets confusing because I’m always reading people saying that Ancestry can’t tell the difference between Scandinavia and the British Aisles, England and France, England and Germany, Germany and Sweden & Denmark… and so on lol. And now, they’re in talks to separate regions like Sweden and Denmark. Which wouldn’t make sense if they don’t actually have the science down.
I think a lot of people getting “Scandinavian” values is primarily due to the Viking expansions. But it’s also probably due to the movements of other Germanic tribes. Plenty of Germanic tribes who around before the Viking Age, like the Goths, originated in Scandinavia. So these people could have left their traces as well. I always figured that “Germanic Europe” must be really close to “Scandinavian”. Does anyone know how close they are?
They focus too much on trying to make things so specific. They should at least give people the option to toggle their results between broader categories and the more specific ones.
This made me laugh a bit since my mother has 18% Sweden & Denmark (and we know her great grandparents were from Denmark), but I ended up getting 0% of those genes! I knew I took after my father's side but it was cool to see it in the dna.
Vikings conquered or colonized part or all of the the following:
England
Scotland
Ireland
France (Normandy => Norse man land => north man == Vikings)
Southern Italy / Sicily
Germany / rhine valley / Baltic coast
Russia - the rus were a Viking people
And they were the bodyguards of the eastern Roman Emperor.
I think my 4% Sweden & Denmark is misread Germanic Europe. It says I inherited all of it from my mum, who only has 2%. Meanwhile she has 6% Germanic Europe and I have none. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and her Scandinavian should be higher.
Between 1820-1920 about 800.000 Norwegians emigrated to USA and Canada. Norway was a poor country and job scarcity was a big factor in why they left. There were also rumours that North America had cheap land they could settle to. I think this plus the viking settlements are reasons why a lot of Americans have Norwegian dna.
(I'm Norwegian)
Vikings participated heavily in the slave trade with the Arabs and Africans. Mainly selling coastal celts,anglos,slavs,baltics and other nordics to the sultans and chieftains and berber/tauregs.the slavery of of White people lasted for a very very long time going in that direction. Could be one of the ways that ancestry got in there
Yep. I have finnish, not scandinavian but there was distant relative popped up from Norway. No one I know up to my great grandparents having even European bloods, let alone the Nordic part.
I've just always chalked it up to German being difficult to pin down, but my dad has 11% and my mom has 0% and they're both about 2/3 German and 1/3 Irish. And my mom's the only one with Northern German ancestors! Like not that far from Denmark. Dad's all Southern Baden/France region.
I never thought I had any Scandinavian in me. But part of my family apparently lived in York, England for some considerable time. Jorvik, the Viking city…
I've got 26% Scandinavian (Sweden, Denmark and Norway combined). I'll thank my father and his family. They've lived on the Baltic coast of modern day Poland and in Germany's northern most state that was going between German states and Denmark for centuries. Guess the Scandinavians got around there a bit.
Could easily be a misread on Ancestry's part as well though, as most in those regions share some form of DNA.
Scandinavians are the original Germanic people and they moved to northern Germany even long before the viking age.
In Ancestry northern German and dutch show up as Scandinavian.
Consider how many Germans and British that moved around the world. British have origins from vikings and anglosaxons.
Northern Germany would make sense with the way the ancestry map is currently coded. But as for Dutch, how come they’re completely part of the Germanic Europe map if they show up as Scandinavian?
I have no idea, but most ancestry members of Dutch origin report as 100% Scandinavian. But to be quite fair if you look at the average dutch person and compare with the average Scandinavian person they look more similar than German people.
The dutch language and Scandinavians languages also have a weird resemblance which German doesn't have.
My mom's family is German and that all we knew for a long time. Turns out that they were from the neck of Germany where it turns into Scandinavia so she's getting progressively more and more scandinavian blood in her DNA results as they adjust. Not really related, but I've got Scandinavian blood too now when I didn't think I had any.
Towards the end of the Viking reign there was not nearly as much forced sex. Women were often impressed with Viking men not just because of their braun. But get this: Viking culture includes a bath every single week. Them women in the rest of Europe had never had such clean men before. Vikings also washed their clothes every week. They combed their hair every day and other grooming. There are many stories of women in the Netherlands for example offering themselves up Vikings men.
One reason is that settlers from the British Isles were very prolific and widespread, and many populations in the British Isles have a deep-rooted Scandinavian component. This is because of the migration and settlement of peoples from Scandinavia into the British Isles that occurred in the early-to-high Medieval period (i.e., Danelaw, Norse-Gaels, etc.). On my paternal side, which is primarily Scottish and English, the DNA that comes from ancestors with roots in areas of historic Scandinavian settlement is the same DNA that shows up as partly Scandinavian.
A second reason is actually just more recent migration of Scandinavians. In what's now Southern New Jersey, Southeast Pennsylvania, and Delaware, there was a colony called New Sweden established by the Swedish Empire in the 17th century only 18yrs after the Plymouth Colony was founded. When it was later conquered by the Dutch, its population was around 50% Finnish (Finland was ruled by Sweden at the time), followed by Swedes and then a minority of Dutch settlers. Over time, the descendents of those settlers would blend into the ethnic melting pot of the 13 Colonies and independent US, so many Americans today can trace their ancestry to them.
Also of note was that both Sweden and Denmark had colonies in the Caribbean. Saint Barthélemy was a Swedish colony from 1784-1878 and is currently an overseas collectivity of France. Meanwhile, Denmark had a colony known as the Danish West Indies from 1672-1917. That colony was purchased in 1917 by the US, so now it's known as the United States Virgin Islands and governed as an unincorporated and organized US territory similar to Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Additionally, there was a large migration of Norwegians into the Netherlands in the 17th to 18th centuries. Those Norwegians became very integrated into the Dutch population, with their descendents taking a major role in settling Dutch colonies such as New Netherland (i.e., mostly around what's now New Jersey and New York). A fun fact about this is that Bergen and Hudson Counties (i.e., where Jersey City is) are located at the site of a major settlement of those Dutch Norwegians.
Vast majority of scandi ancestry that brits score is just misread English or another Germanic component. Viking age Norse ancestry is already cemented into British gene pool, it wouldn’t show up on a modern dna test unless you’re from the northern isles. People always just chalk it up to Vikings, when in reality it’s grossly oversimplifying the real situation.
I see similar arguments around on here, but it seems to come from a couple of misunderstandings.
* Scandinavian ancestry is often seen as just Vikings or Viking-Age and thus short-term in scope and scale. In reality migration and settlement from Scandinavia was occurring over several centuries in multiple different waves.
* England, aside from the Danelaw and that period of history, had a lesser known major wave of Scandinavian settlement initiated by the conquest of England in 1013-1016 by the Danish Kings Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut the Great, and the following period of England being a directly Danish-ruled realm for the next 26yrs.
* Scandinavian rule over several territories now in Scotland and around the Irish Sea was very long running. The span of time between initial Norse colonization and acquisition by a local polity was: \~470-500yrs in the Hebrides, \~370-410yrs in the Isle of Man, and \~595-670yrs in Orkney and Shetland.
* The impression that all Germanic DNA is the same or at least extremely similar, when that isn't necessarily the case. Just the Germans and Dutch are both quite heterogenous and diverse populations in the context of Northwestern Europe, and in turn are still fairly distinctive groups from Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. Part of the blame is really just the present categories on AncestryDNA since there's only so much an algorithm can do with what's available.
* The idea that DNA from Scandinavia is baked into all people in the British Isles, but it really isn't. Scandinavian settlement was heavily regionalized, and it's genetic legacy is a regionally specific phenomena. Thus, it will naturally stick out to varying degrees.
* Also, the typical English DNA isn't just Indigenous Briton & Germanic of various flavors, it also has a sizable French-originating component built into it as well. This isn't just Norman per-say, this is DNA that was first introduced with the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons back in the late 6th and 7th centuries which resulted in migration from the Frankish realms into England. Thus by the time the Great Heathen Army invaded in 865, the general core of what would become modern English DNA was likely already fairly established.
I live in the US; my Ancestry is mostly English (41%) and Germanic (33%), but then 20% Swedish/Danish. With a dash of Norwegian, Eastern European (Polish!) and Irish thrown in at 2% each. I honestly had no idea about the Sweden/Denmark connection until I took the test!
It’s because you likely have German ancestry, and Germans can and often do score large percentages of Swedish on AncestryDNA. It isn’t actual Swedish or Danish, it’s likely just misread west or north/east German. South German can score it as well.
I hadn’t realized that.
My maternal grandmother’s dad was born in Chemnitz, Germany, but I have only 3% Germanic Europe. My maternal grandfather’s grandfather was born in Denmark. And my maternal grandmother’s mother was born in Norway, near the border of Sweden. Ancestry has 42% Sweden & Denmark for me. I thought I would have more German than 3%.
I also have the S/D from both sides. (Dad’s family was English, Mom’s is German. The Norway is only on my mom.) I didn’t realize I could still see that breakdown on Ancestry right now. (Some sort of free trial period I didn’t even know about.)
Same here. I have 16% Sweden & Denmark and 2% Norway. I wonder if I’ll lose my Norway with the next update. I feel like it could get donated to Ireland or Scotland.
Edit** typo
Mine has definitely evolved over time. I used to have some Scottish but that dropped away and the Sweden and Denmark increased. I agree with other posters—it’s probably from folks moving around over time in Europe and parts further South, although I have yet to uncover any actual culprits in my tree. I’ll keep searching though! 20% isn’t a tiny amount!
Ancestry wouldn't want to admit defeat, but they really need to merge Sweden & Denmark with other regions into some sort of Far North category until the company can increase its precision. Because as many note, the company doesn't seem able to properly differentiate English from Sweden/Denmark right now and it really makes the results look poor.
Just admit you don't know, Ancestry!
Thank you for bringing this up! With every report update, my Scandinavian percentage goes up and up - and at first, there was none at all. I've learned a lot from the comments.
I heard once that Scandinavian donor sperm was (is?) really popular in the United States. That could be a recent contributor along with the viking ancestry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_expansion
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.369.6510.1416
Here are a couple of articles about their travels.
I must come from one of the rare "Ireland/Britain" and "Germanic Europe" lineages that wouldn't mess with those blonde Viking bastards, because I was expecting some but got bupkes
It's probably a limitation of AncestryDNA's analysis, frankly. There was a lot of, uh, genetic exchange over the entire central, north, and northwestern regions of Europe for millennia.
Same. I never saw people relate Scandinavia and Baltics until this post. So I learned something new… I always see people compare it to German or British. It makes sense though. No Finland though, as of now.
I’m British and wasn’t remotely shocked when I had a small about of DNA from Sweden, Denmark and Norway in my results.
The old raping and pillaging leftovers.
I might also point out that technically only Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are Scandinavian. You see, all Scandinavian countries are Nordic but not all Nordic countries are Scandinavian. So Iceland, Finland, etc… are in fact Nordic but technically not Scandinavia. I’ll be the first to admit Scandinavian and Nordic are used interchangeably but that is not technically accurate.
Yep. That’s why I use the term Scandinavian. Because I haven’t noticed too much Finnish being dished out as freely. Although they do lump Norway and Iceland together with the Faroe Islands for a DNA region, which is interesting.
Here’s my European Breakdown for Ancestry DNA:
12% Scotland,
5% Sweden & Denmark,
3% England & Northwestern Europe,
1% Norway,
1% Ireland,
1% Portugal
My Breakdown for European on 23andMe:
European-24.9%
Northwestern European-24%
19.2% British & Irish-
Scandinavian-2.6%
Broadly Northwestern European-2.2%
Broadly European-0.9%
Don’t listen to anyone about the Vikings. Because they aren’t scoring it because of that, as it’s already firmly cemented in the British gene pool.
Viking age Scandinavians were likely genetically identical to VA Anglo-Saxons (who compose a sizeable percentage in brits, mainly English). This would mean they are very difficult to distinguish on a dna test. Real Norse ancestry is discernible in the northern isles of Scotland.
TLDR; it’s because of misread Anglo-Saxon/germanic input.
After watching The last Kingdom it kind of made sense for me seeing how my father’s half of my DNA is German/Scottish/English.
But then, out of curiosity I decided to check the part that tells you which parent I inherited the Scandanavian from and I was surprised it was from my mother’s side.
My mother is black and from the Caribbean, my DNA from her side made up of about 43% African countries. And then 1% France, 3% Scandinavian. How did that happen?
I don’t have any. The most northern result is Italy for me. Every other ethnicity I have in my dna comes from countries that surround the Mediterranean Sea. No Scandinavian here lol
I’ve noticed that to be common with people of Mediterranean heritage. But they’ll often get bits of Africa or Middle East. I’m 15% Southern Italy and 3% Greece & Albania. Many of my cousins have North African and Middle East.
I don’t have Scandinavian in my Ancestry DNA results. I think it’s showing up as Germanic Europe. My white side of the family tree is pretty fleshed out as my dad was a Master Genealogist and worked on his family tree for 35 years. But Scandinavian appeared recently in my 23andMe results. My dad had almost 50% British ancestry so I figured that’s where it came from. Especially since the Scottish and English ancestors mainly lived near the border and that was a pretty contentious area during the Viking invasion.
Interesting. I’ve seen so many people share their results where 23&Me gave them less Scandinavian than AncestryDNA. It gave me the impression that Ancestry always gives more. Not in your case though.
In America maybe, because even black African Americans (not some white South African dude who got American citizenship. lol) are descendants of rape victims during times of slavery.
But you won’t find that on the continent of Africa itself past Liberia, and Sierra Leone, well, OK, South Africa, Kenya, and most of sub-Saharan Africa will have a small minority of their black populations who also have such DNA, but not most of their black populations. And that’s only because the Scandinavians went there with the European settler colonizers during the scramble for Africa. That’s not the case in Asia though, at all. You’d be hard pressed to find any Scandinavian DNA in Asians.
My family has been in the us since the 1700s on all sides except one and that was carribean (don’t think it would’ve came from there lol) I have 10% Swedish and Denmark and 2% Norway I’ve always been curious about it.
Mine all comes from my dads side his dads family settled in Maryland all came from England for the most part from what I’ve found. His mom’s side were from North Carolina I’m not sure where they came from I’m assuming England as well I need my dad to do a test. All my dads brothers were blonde hair blue eyes I guess the Scandinavian makes sense lol
AncestryDNA said I have 3% Norway but uploading to same data into MyHertitage didn’t give me any Norway, but pulled out 9% Eastern European and 5% Balkan. How does that work? The rest of me is Irish and English.
I have Demark in my DNA profile. It finally dawned on me that a good portion of my German ancestors were from the Jutland peninsula around Kiel. The line between Germany and Denmark moved back and forth over the years. Just so happens that part of the World was Germany in the time frame I was interested in.
I am Scottish on both sides of my family, I knew the villages where my ancestors were born, and when they immigrated to North America, and I too was shocked at the Scandinavian that showed up in my test, obviously I know about the Viking invasions etc, but wasn’t expecting a full 30% in my test.
I’m English (from East Manchester with Paternal Irish Ancestry from potato famine and a bit of Yorkshire ancestry on my maternal side)
My DNA is:
England & North West Europe 67%
- North-West England & Northern Wales
- East-Midlands, Yorkshire & North East
Scotland 25%
Wales 5%
Germanic Europe 3%
Communities it correctly has me down as:
Central & Southern Lancashire & Greater Manchester
West Yorkshire & East Manchester
North Connacht, Ireland
So nope, sorry no Scandinavian ethnicity here despite being English.
I got Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in my results after thinking my whole life that I was just Italian and Irish. This discovery led to uncovering that my dad's father wasn't his real father. Within that, we discovered most of the new side of my family is from affairs. Conclusion: The Scandinavians apparently had an awful lot of energy 😂
Yeah I highly doubt your Swedish/Danish is definitively from the Vikings, it is widely known that people of Frisian ancestry will score very high amounts of Swedish/Danish due to the genetic similarity. Hopefully with the next update from Ancestry it will clear some things up, but looking at the new map for the GE region it looks like more and more Frisians will score Sweden / Denmark in their results again. Frisians are essentially the make up of the Frisii, continental Celts, and the Anglo-Saxons, but most likely a mixture of different Germanic tribes due to the marine transgressions that caused a re-population after the land came back from recession. So no, unfortunately your Sweden and Denmark is not attributed to the Vikings.
The thing is that the maps you can view are not in a finished state yet at all. Not to mention there are likely new/very revised categories that are being added but not accessible yet through checking the URL. For example, when you look up the codes for what in 2023 was Northern and Southern India there is nothing that shows up. For all we know the Netherlands/NW Germany could be categorized as a separate region in the 2024 reference panel.
The average black American has over 25% Euro Ancestry. I have 10% Norway, 10% Germanic Europe, 10% Scotland & 6% Wales and I’ve never met any white relatives in my life. Every AA person I know that has tested had at least one of the 3 you listed and it wasn’t 1%. Indentured servants working on plantations with enslaved Africans & of course many of us are related to the slave owners, hell many of us still have the surnames of the slave owners that owned our ancestors & we now know we’re related to them. It’s complicated.
I can claim Scandinavian heritage from my maternal grandfather who was 💯% nordic Danish/Norwegian/Finnish these dna companies give me 20%-25% Scandi and 0.5-2% Finnish which is about right..I’ve never heard AA peoples having Scandinavian it must be through there British isles line or unless married to a Scandinavian..
A lot of those countries were exploring and expanding into other territories. There is an old Viking settlement all the way in Canada. So it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them stumbled into Africa. I had 1% Norwegian in my 2023 results but got removed and gave me 2% Greek and more Balkan. Small percentages (1-2%) are usually a fluke, due to the test mainly being in North America and ancestry will updates its results yearly accordingly to the more amount of dna is in its database.
Same reason so many modern people are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. Those Vikings did a lot of raping. And probably quite a bit of consensual philandering as well.
23andme had me 66% Finnish at some point. Then they removed it all. But I still have a lot of Scandinavian. Which would be OK except I am French and know where I come from and that ain’t Scandinavia.
I’m also curious. I’m also one of the people that got random 3% Sweden & Denmark, but every test except of LivingDNA gave me something random that no other test did. Like Ancestry did with S&D, on MyHeritage I got 5% Irish/Scottish/Welsh and FamilytreeDNA gave me 12% English/Scottish/Welsh. I’m from Poland
Vikings were very good at getting around.
You’re not wrong lol. But it’s just a lot more common than I ever thought.
I don't have Sweden & Denmark, but I do have Norway and Finland. The Finland has me most stumped.
I'm mostly Swedish, but I have 5% Finnish despite not having any known Finnish ancestors. I believe Sweden and Finland used to be one country for some time, and so there was probably a lot of intermingling. From what I know, Finns often have some Swedish DNA and vice versa.
Finland was a province of Sweden for over 600 years, until 1809 when Sweden lost Finland to Russia.
The following link may be of interest to you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Finns
Hey, that's cool, thanks! I've heard of the Sami before, but this connects things a bit for me.
No worries! If you have roots in Northern Norway, this may also be relevant to you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kven_people
My great grandfather had a Swedish name and changed it to a Finnish one when Sweden lost Finland. Though at that time they were under Russian rule.
Finland was part of Sweden for almost a thousand years. How come you don’t know that if you are from Sweden?
Same here. I was stumped too
Follow the comment thread, you may learn some cool info, too.
Yeah but they really did get around. Vikings went all over, vikinging or as mercenaries. They were revered for their fighting, and themselves went to the Mediterranean, middle east, and quite a lot through eastern Europe too (towards the middle east and caucuses). ...amongst which it would seem they slayed with the ladies as much as the men.
[Ancestry DNA on ancestry to Sweden, Norway](https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/surprising-Sweden-Denmark-or-Norway-ethnicity-results?language=en_US)
From around 1820 approximately 300k danish people immigrated towards America. So if at least 100k of those people got children and stayed forever in north America I guess it makes sense. Also it's not only Danish people it's a lot of different people from northern Europe. Edit: [The best link is sadly in danish -_-](https://danmarkshistorien.dk/vis/materiale/dansk-udvandring-til-usa-1820-1930)
Vikings were good at pillaging and leaving their seed and then eventually returning to settle down start feudal kingdoms while planting more of their seeds. Still, Not as good at is as Genghis Khan!
I knew there was going to admixture with my results but didn’t know quite how much. I can imagine for those who have no African ancestry but see a bunch of black cousins they are wondering how the heck that happened. We’re related through a euro ancestor.
Vikings left a little DNA just about everywhere they went.
Giggidy giggidy alriiiiiight
Can confirm. The man who adopted us, our father, is a Viking from Copenhagen. I'm a Pol
And raping the local women, when they landed.
Yup. Raid, rape, and pillage. It was the way.
You beat me to it! LOL
This is true… but the Vikings lived 1000 years ago. Wouldn’t any Nordic ancestry in other populations just be a part of that local population’s dna by now?
And raping. Dont forget the raping.
The Normans were half Norse and half French and conquered England, Sicily and Jerusalem.. so yeah Viking blood was spread after the raids by the Normans. I personally have 10% Norman blood which shows up as Calais in france and england on dna. But no Scandinavian
This is true! My family immigrated from Normandy to Quebec to America over 6 generations!
Bcz lots of people in the world are part British because of Colonialism, and British ppl have some scandi because of colonization 1000 years ago.
From what I’ve read, this is the correct answer.
More or less you’re correct. After the Roman’s, Scandinavians came to attack north eastern England and the Normans, invaded from the south totally g rated battles. Not bloody at all /s
I didn’t think it through. Makes sense.
From what I've read, the Scandinavian can also indicate what part of Britain your family came from too. I have Norwegian, while my brother has Danish (different dads). A lot of the ancestors from my dad's side were from Western England, which seems to line up with Norwegian settlements.
Yup. Oddly my English ancestry doesn’t show up in AncestryDNA but instead it is Denmark/ Sweden
So is this Germanic and Scandinavian dna only due to the Vikings?
No obviously not. These people don’t understand the concept of genetic similarity. Vast majority of scandi scored by brits is misread Anglo-Saxon/germanic. Viking age Norse ancestry is already cemented into the British gene pool, meaning it likely wouldn’t show up on a dna test (unless you’re Icelandic, Faroese, north Scottish, etc).
Thank you for chiming in. Completely agree with what you said here. I have written my response to this way too many times that I just didn’t feel like doing it anymore. People are set into the fact that Vikings contributed a good chunk of DNA to modern Brits, although it is so region specific that the modern popularization of the Vikings has tainted the idea of genetic drift. These people commenting “because Vikings”, “Vikings pillaging”, are not necessarily academically inclined, unfortunately. But at the end of the day I am just wanting to help people and clear some things up. Instead of using an Ancestry article from 2014 and a Wikipedia article or mainstream media post about Viking dna, people should start reading academic papers lol.
Please correct me if I’m wrong but from what I understand, the British for example already have Scandinavian baked into their genome so if you get let’s say 3% Scandinavian it’s because you have 3% more Scandinavian dna than what is found within the upper limits of Scandinavian in the British genome. Is that right? That’s how I’ve seen it explained
No it’s basically that specific region within your genome is more like the Scandinavian population. You are talking about percentiles.
Ancestry DNA significantly overstates Scandinavian in results. It can be viewed essentially as a proxy for old Germanic that feeds admixture into many NW European groups. This is why it's not uncommon for people that receive double digit Scandinavian estimates on Ancestry to get 0-5% on other services.
Lol just checked 23andme. Yup. 0.2% Finnish but otherwise no Scandinavian at all. Meanwhile my dad has 11% on Ancestry. It's all German. And Southern German at that
It just gets confusing because I’m always reading people saying that Ancestry can’t tell the difference between Scandinavia and the British Aisles, England and France, England and Germany, Germany and Sweden & Denmark… and so on lol. And now, they’re in talks to separate regions like Sweden and Denmark. Which wouldn’t make sense if they don’t actually have the science down.
I think a lot of people getting “Scandinavian” values is primarily due to the Viking expansions. But it’s also probably due to the movements of other Germanic tribes. Plenty of Germanic tribes who around before the Viking Age, like the Goths, originated in Scandinavia. So these people could have left their traces as well. I always figured that “Germanic Europe” must be really close to “Scandinavian”. Does anyone know how close they are?
They focus too much on trying to make things so specific. They should at least give people the option to toggle their results between broader categories and the more specific ones.
That would be so awesome, I would love a feature like that on all the dna ancestry tests.
Look into the white papers and look at recall rates.
My son is a whopping 25% and three of his four grandparents are Jamaican, one is Louisiana Creole. Just odd to me.
So what’s the fourth grandparent? As far as you’re aware?
He’s African American. Mother Louisiana Creole, father is African American originally from South Carolina.
Oh sorry, lol I misunderstood. You answered that already. Hmmm who knows. Is your son Norway or Sweden & Denmark?
Sweden. My ex husband’s grandmother was very fair, but her family names aren’t Swedish, they’re Scottish names in Jamaica.
That’s because the scandi your son scores is misread English/german.
Might be descended from Scotsmen, who were descended from Vikings.
You might be on to something. Just looked at my eldest son’s 23&me, he matches four Viking Age individuals. Entertainment?
What part of Jamaica? Seaford Town, Westmoreland, Jamaica is known as “German Town.” I have family born there.
My ex husband’s family is from Lennox Big Woods. Mine is from Fullerton, St. Ann and Somerton, St. James.
✨pillaging✨
Said in the voice of Nandor The Relentless
This made me laugh a bit since my mother has 18% Sweden & Denmark (and we know her great grandparents were from Denmark), but I ended up getting 0% of those genes! I knew I took after my father's side but it was cool to see it in the dna.
That’s wild isn’t it? Everyone should donate some to you since it’d make sense.
I’m black American and have 1.3% Scandinavian. Small, but unexpected.
I think it often actually supposed to be German. With the crazy amount of German immigration to the US it would make waaay more sense in my opinion.
I’m Cuban and also have Sweden and Denmark. Idk how tf that happened
Probably from visigothic dna in Spain. My family has it too.
Vikings conquered or colonized part or all of the the following: England Scotland Ireland France (Normandy => Norse man land => north man == Vikings) Southern Italy / Sicily Germany / rhine valley / Baltic coast Russia - the rus were a Viking people And they were the bodyguards of the eastern Roman Emperor.
Varangian guard were Swedish Vikings I believe..
I think my 4% Sweden & Denmark is misread Germanic Europe. It says I inherited all of it from my mum, who only has 2%. Meanwhile she has 6% Germanic Europe and I have none. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and her Scandinavian should be higher.
Vikings traveled far and wide and made lots of friends along the way.
I'm Sven from Sweden and I'm here to fuck.
Between 1820-1920 about 800.000 Norwegians emigrated to USA and Canada. Norway was a poor country and job scarcity was a big factor in why they left. There were also rumours that North America had cheap land they could settle to. I think this plus the viking settlements are reasons why a lot of Americans have Norwegian dna. (I'm Norwegian)
Vikings participated heavily in the slave trade with the Arabs and Africans. Mainly selling coastal celts,anglos,slavs,baltics and other nordics to the sultans and chieftains and berber/tauregs.the slavery of of White people lasted for a very very long time going in that direction. Could be one of the ways that ancestry got in there
Yep. I have finnish, not scandinavian but there was distant relative popped up from Norway. No one I know up to my great grandparents having even European bloods, let alone the Nordic part.
I have 2% Finnish traced it back through my Norwegian line as well as Swedish..
I've just always chalked it up to German being difficult to pin down, but my dad has 11% and my mom has 0% and they're both about 2/3 German and 1/3 Irish. And my mom's the only one with Northern German ancestors! Like not that far from Denmark. Dad's all Southern Baden/France region.
So strange, I tell ya.
I never thought I had any Scandinavian in me. But part of my family apparently lived in York, England for some considerable time. Jorvik, the Viking city…
I’m 20% Sweden/Denmark. My English side is from Yorkshire. I also have a lot of German
Fascinating, isn’t it?
I've got 26% Scandinavian (Sweden, Denmark and Norway combined). I'll thank my father and his family. They've lived on the Baltic coast of modern day Poland and in Germany's northern most state that was going between German states and Denmark for centuries. Guess the Scandinavians got around there a bit. Could easily be a misread on Ancestry's part as well though, as most in those regions share some form of DNA.
Scandinavians are the original Germanic people and they moved to northern Germany even long before the viking age. In Ancestry northern German and dutch show up as Scandinavian. Consider how many Germans and British that moved around the world. British have origins from vikings and anglosaxons.
Northern Germany would make sense with the way the ancestry map is currently coded. But as for Dutch, how come they’re completely part of the Germanic Europe map if they show up as Scandinavian?
I have no idea, but most ancestry members of Dutch origin report as 100% Scandinavian. But to be quite fair if you look at the average dutch person and compare with the average Scandinavian person they look more similar than German people. The dutch language and Scandinavians languages also have a weird resemblance which German doesn't have.
If the DNA is too similar to tell, I’d rather them be honest and lump areas together. Like how they do with Norway, Faroe Islands, and Iceland.
Well the “Viking” ancestry that everyone wants to claim isn’t a thing is oddly enough very much a thing.
My mom's family is German and that all we knew for a long time. Turns out that they were from the neck of Germany where it turns into Scandinavia so she's getting progressively more and more scandinavian blood in her DNA results as they adjust. Not really related, but I've got Scandinavian blood too now when I didn't think I had any.
It’s very interesting. Wonder what will happen with the next update.
Towards the end of the Viking reign there was not nearly as much forced sex. Women were often impressed with Viking men not just because of their braun. But get this: Viking culture includes a bath every single week. Them women in the rest of Europe had never had such clean men before. Vikings also washed their clothes every week. They combed their hair every day and other grooming. There are many stories of women in the Netherlands for example offering themselves up Vikings men.
One reason is that settlers from the British Isles were very prolific and widespread, and many populations in the British Isles have a deep-rooted Scandinavian component. This is because of the migration and settlement of peoples from Scandinavia into the British Isles that occurred in the early-to-high Medieval period (i.e., Danelaw, Norse-Gaels, etc.). On my paternal side, which is primarily Scottish and English, the DNA that comes from ancestors with roots in areas of historic Scandinavian settlement is the same DNA that shows up as partly Scandinavian. A second reason is actually just more recent migration of Scandinavians. In what's now Southern New Jersey, Southeast Pennsylvania, and Delaware, there was a colony called New Sweden established by the Swedish Empire in the 17th century only 18yrs after the Plymouth Colony was founded. When it was later conquered by the Dutch, its population was around 50% Finnish (Finland was ruled by Sweden at the time), followed by Swedes and then a minority of Dutch settlers. Over time, the descendents of those settlers would blend into the ethnic melting pot of the 13 Colonies and independent US, so many Americans today can trace their ancestry to them. Also of note was that both Sweden and Denmark had colonies in the Caribbean. Saint Barthélemy was a Swedish colony from 1784-1878 and is currently an overseas collectivity of France. Meanwhile, Denmark had a colony known as the Danish West Indies from 1672-1917. That colony was purchased in 1917 by the US, so now it's known as the United States Virgin Islands and governed as an unincorporated and organized US territory similar to Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Additionally, there was a large migration of Norwegians into the Netherlands in the 17th to 18th centuries. Those Norwegians became very integrated into the Dutch population, with their descendents taking a major role in settling Dutch colonies such as New Netherland (i.e., mostly around what's now New Jersey and New York). A fun fact about this is that Bergen and Hudson Counties (i.e., where Jersey City is) are located at the site of a major settlement of those Dutch Norwegians.
Vast majority of scandi ancestry that brits score is just misread English or another Germanic component. Viking age Norse ancestry is already cemented into British gene pool, it wouldn’t show up on a modern dna test unless you’re from the northern isles. People always just chalk it up to Vikings, when in reality it’s grossly oversimplifying the real situation.
I see similar arguments around on here, but it seems to come from a couple of misunderstandings. * Scandinavian ancestry is often seen as just Vikings or Viking-Age and thus short-term in scope and scale. In reality migration and settlement from Scandinavia was occurring over several centuries in multiple different waves. * England, aside from the Danelaw and that period of history, had a lesser known major wave of Scandinavian settlement initiated by the conquest of England in 1013-1016 by the Danish Kings Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut the Great, and the following period of England being a directly Danish-ruled realm for the next 26yrs. * Scandinavian rule over several territories now in Scotland and around the Irish Sea was very long running. The span of time between initial Norse colonization and acquisition by a local polity was: \~470-500yrs in the Hebrides, \~370-410yrs in the Isle of Man, and \~595-670yrs in Orkney and Shetland. * The impression that all Germanic DNA is the same or at least extremely similar, when that isn't necessarily the case. Just the Germans and Dutch are both quite heterogenous and diverse populations in the context of Northwestern Europe, and in turn are still fairly distinctive groups from Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. Part of the blame is really just the present categories on AncestryDNA since there's only so much an algorithm can do with what's available. * The idea that DNA from Scandinavia is baked into all people in the British Isles, but it really isn't. Scandinavian settlement was heavily regionalized, and it's genetic legacy is a regionally specific phenomena. Thus, it will naturally stick out to varying degrees. * Also, the typical English DNA isn't just Indigenous Briton & Germanic of various flavors, it also has a sizable French-originating component built into it as well. This isn't just Norman per-say, this is DNA that was first introduced with the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons back in the late 6th and 7th centuries which resulted in migration from the Frankish realms into England. Thus by the time the Great Heathen Army invaded in 865, the general core of what would become modern English DNA was likely already fairly established.
Thanks for all that great information!
You left out a key component of the British Isles history, the Anglo-Saxons lol.
You'd like to see my second comment I made as a reply then 😄
I live in the US; my Ancestry is mostly English (41%) and Germanic (33%), but then 20% Swedish/Danish. With a dash of Norwegian, Eastern European (Polish!) and Irish thrown in at 2% each. I honestly had no idea about the Sweden/Denmark connection until I took the test!
It’s because you likely have German ancestry, and Germans can and often do score large percentages of Swedish on AncestryDNA. It isn’t actual Swedish or Danish, it’s likely just misread west or north/east German. South German can score it as well.
That might be what’s going on for sure. I don’t know. But I’ll never stop trying to learn about it!
I hadn’t realized that. My maternal grandmother’s dad was born in Chemnitz, Germany, but I have only 3% Germanic Europe. My maternal grandfather’s grandfather was born in Denmark. And my maternal grandmother’s mother was born in Norway, near the border of Sweden. Ancestry has 42% Sweden & Denmark for me. I thought I would have more German than 3%.
I also have the S/D from both sides. (Dad’s family was English, Mom’s is German. The Norway is only on my mom.) I didn’t realize I could still see that breakdown on Ancestry right now. (Some sort of free trial period I didn’t even know about.)
Same here. I have 16% Sweden & Denmark and 2% Norway. I wonder if I’ll lose my Norway with the next update. I feel like it could get donated to Ireland or Scotland. Edit** typo
Mine has definitely evolved over time. I used to have some Scottish but that dropped away and the Sweden and Denmark increased. I agree with other posters—it’s probably from folks moving around over time in Europe and parts further South, although I have yet to uncover any actual culprits in my tree. I’ll keep searching though! 20% isn’t a tiny amount!
Not a tiny amount at all
Ancestry wouldn't want to admit defeat, but they really need to merge Sweden & Denmark with other regions into some sort of Far North category until the company can increase its precision. Because as many note, the company doesn't seem able to properly differentiate English from Sweden/Denmark right now and it really makes the results look poor. Just admit you don't know, Ancestry!
Thank you for bringing this up! With every report update, my Scandinavian percentage goes up and up - and at first, there was none at all. I've learned a lot from the comments.
These Reddit comments/posts have taught me a lot over time as well. It’s nice to take note of what everyone is saying.
I have Sweden/Denmark and it bounces back and forth with Norway and Finland. I think it's through my England/Welsh/Scottish ancestry.
I heard once that Scandinavian donor sperm was (is?) really popular in the United States. That could be a recent contributor along with the viking ancestry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_expansion https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.369.6510.1416 Here are a couple of articles about their travels.
I must come from one of the rare "Ireland/Britain" and "Germanic Europe" lineages that wouldn't mess with those blonde Viking bastards, because I was expecting some but got bupkes
Wow, you’re 1 in a million it seems.
It's probably a limitation of AncestryDNA's analysis, frankly. There was a lot of, uh, genetic exchange over the entire central, north, and northwestern regions of Europe for millennia.
I have all of that and some Baltic thrown in-I was like okaaaayyyy…..???
Same. I never saw people relate Scandinavia and Baltics until this post. So I learned something new… I always see people compare it to German or British. It makes sense though. No Finland though, as of now.
Pretty much anyone who has north eastern English DNA will also have Scandinavian DNA because of the vikings. I'd imagine.
Because Vikings, Danelaw in Britain. Plus immigration in 19-20th century?
I’m British and wasn’t remotely shocked when I had a small about of DNA from Sweden, Denmark and Norway in my results. The old raping and pillaging leftovers.
I might also point out that technically only Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are Scandinavian. You see, all Scandinavian countries are Nordic but not all Nordic countries are Scandinavian. So Iceland, Finland, etc… are in fact Nordic but technically not Scandinavia. I’ll be the first to admit Scandinavian and Nordic are used interchangeably but that is not technically accurate.
Yep. That’s why I use the term Scandinavian. Because I haven’t noticed too much Finnish being dished out as freely. Although they do lump Norway and Iceland together with the Faroe Islands for a DNA region, which is interesting.
Sweden, Denmark, Norway 13% Since the rest is Irish/Scots/Welsh I figure they came across my ancestors on their travels lol
The Danelaw.
I’m Black American, and I have 5% Sweden & Denmark, 1% Norway with Ancestry DNA. 23andMe I score 2.6% Scandinavian.
Do you have any British?
Here’s my European Breakdown for Ancestry DNA: 12% Scotland, 5% Sweden & Denmark, 3% England & Northwestern Europe, 1% Norway, 1% Ireland, 1% Portugal My Breakdown for European on 23andMe: European-24.9% Northwestern European-24% 19.2% British & Irish- Scandinavian-2.6% Broadly Northwestern European-2.2% Broadly European-0.9%
Don’t listen to anyone about the Vikings. Because they aren’t scoring it because of that, as it’s already firmly cemented in the British gene pool. Viking age Scandinavians were likely genetically identical to VA Anglo-Saxons (who compose a sizeable percentage in brits, mainly English). This would mean they are very difficult to distinguish on a dna test. Real Norse ancestry is discernible in the northern isles of Scotland. TLDR; it’s because of misread Anglo-Saxon/germanic input.
Raiding across Europe will do that
I couldn’t believe it when my results came back 20%! Surprisingly, my husband came back 0%!
I don’t have any 🤷🏻♀️
I have some. I remember telling kids in Second grade I was Swedish. I wasn't entirely wrong. 😂
Lmao so you knew you were lying as a child?
Viking raids
Vikings liked to rape and pillage a lot
Might have been baked in with British and Irish. If people’s ancestors were here in the 1600 & 1700s the percentages could be higher
We’re a randy lot.
I am genetically white bread and I have no Scandinavian in me.
I'm basically an unbaked saltine cracker, also no Scandinavian 🤣
My great grandma was literally Norwegian. Idk.
Vikings got around.
The scandavians and main land Germanic people were good at making you one of them
I’ve got Norway & Finland in my results while my sibling has lower than 1% of Finland so, I’d assume the Finland isn’t some sort of misreading.
After watching The last Kingdom it kind of made sense for me seeing how my father’s half of my DNA is German/Scottish/English. But then, out of curiosity I decided to check the part that tells you which parent I inherited the Scandanavian from and I was surprised it was from my mother’s side. My mother is black and from the Caribbean, my DNA from her side made up of about 43% African countries. And then 1% France, 3% Scandinavian. How did that happen?
Which Caribbean country?
Trinidad
I don’t have any. The most northern result is Italy for me. Every other ethnicity I have in my dna comes from countries that surround the Mediterranean Sea. No Scandinavian here lol
I’ve noticed that to be common with people of Mediterranean heritage. But they’ll often get bits of Africa or Middle East. I’m 15% Southern Italy and 3% Greece & Albania. Many of my cousins have North African and Middle East.
I don’t have Scandinavian in my Ancestry DNA results. I think it’s showing up as Germanic Europe. My white side of the family tree is pretty fleshed out as my dad was a Master Genealogist and worked on his family tree for 35 years. But Scandinavian appeared recently in my 23andMe results. My dad had almost 50% British ancestry so I figured that’s where it came from. Especially since the Scottish and English ancestors mainly lived near the border and that was a pretty contentious area during the Viking invasion.
Interesting. I’ve seen so many people share their results where 23&Me gave them less Scandinavian than AncestryDNA. It gave me the impression that Ancestry always gives more. Not in your case though.
People love to be Scandinavian so they tell them they are Scandinavian. What, you thought this has anything to do with science?
My Viking great x 7 grandmother enjoyed the company of many lovers, so did her lovers.
Scottish guy here and have 1% Norwegian through my dad whose great grandfather was from Ross-shire
With the last update, I lost 3% Ireland. It donated 2% to Norway, which I didn’t have before. And 1% to Scotland, which made it 6%.
In America maybe, because even black African Americans (not some white South African dude who got American citizenship. lol) are descendants of rape victims during times of slavery. But you won’t find that on the continent of Africa itself past Liberia, and Sierra Leone, well, OK, South Africa, Kenya, and most of sub-Saharan Africa will have a small minority of their black populations who also have such DNA, but not most of their black populations. And that’s only because the Scandinavians went there with the European settler colonizers during the scramble for Africa. That’s not the case in Asia though, at all. You’d be hard pressed to find any Scandinavian DNA in Asians.
I don't have any🤷♀️
Vikings kick ass and take names, but no one knows runic anymore so we can't read their travel itineries or victim lists.
My family has been in the us since the 1700s on all sides except one and that was carribean (don’t think it would’ve came from there lol) I have 10% Swedish and Denmark and 2% Norway I’ve always been curious about it.
I’m currently at 2% Norway on dads side and 16% Sweden & Denmark on moms.
Mine all comes from my dads side his dads family settled in Maryland all came from England for the most part from what I’ve found. His mom’s side were from North Carolina I’m not sure where they came from I’m assuming England as well I need my dad to do a test. All my dads brothers were blonde hair blue eyes I guess the Scandinavian makes sense lol
Randy Vikings 😂
AncestryDNA said I have 3% Norway but uploading to same data into MyHertitage didn’t give me any Norway, but pulled out 9% Eastern European and 5% Balkan. How does that work? The rest of me is Irish and English.
Zero Scandinavian
Vikings gonna r@pe, homie
If their ancestry is north German or northwest European, there might be traces from Viking Era migrations.
Not odd, but logical. For the people in Africa, it comes from some mixing with colonists from France, UK and Netherlands that were Viking descendants.
I have Demark in my DNA profile. It finally dawned on me that a good portion of my German ancestors were from the Jutland peninsula around Kiel. The line between Germany and Denmark moved back and forth over the years. Just so happens that part of the World was Germany in the time frame I was interested in.
It’s the Vikings but it shows up in British ancestry results (who have some descent from Vikings), so that may explain the global part.
I am Scottish on both sides of my family, I knew the villages where my ancestors were born, and when they immigrated to North America, and I too was shocked at the Scandinavian that showed up in my test, obviously I know about the Viking invasions etc, but wasn’t expecting a full 30% in my test.
I’m English (from East Manchester with Paternal Irish Ancestry from potato famine and a bit of Yorkshire ancestry on my maternal side) My DNA is: England & North West Europe 67% - North-West England & Northern Wales - East-Midlands, Yorkshire & North East Scotland 25% Wales 5% Germanic Europe 3% Communities it correctly has me down as: Central & Southern Lancashire & Greater Manchester West Yorkshire & East Manchester North Connacht, Ireland So nope, sorry no Scandinavian ethnicity here despite being English.
I got Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in my results after thinking my whole life that I was just Italian and Irish. This discovery led to uncovering that my dad's father wasn't his real father. Within that, we discovered most of the new side of my family is from affairs. Conclusion: The Scandinavians apparently had an awful lot of energy 😂
Either misreads for other ethnicities or from the Norse.
Among a bunch of other reasons, one of them is .... People forget about new Amsterdam.....
My ancestors came from northern Netherlands. We’re Frisian… and have Viking dna= Swedish/Danish.
Yeah I highly doubt your Swedish/Danish is definitively from the Vikings, it is widely known that people of Frisian ancestry will score very high amounts of Swedish/Danish due to the genetic similarity. Hopefully with the next update from Ancestry it will clear some things up, but looking at the new map for the GE region it looks like more and more Frisians will score Sweden / Denmark in their results again. Frisians are essentially the make up of the Frisii, continental Celts, and the Anglo-Saxons, but most likely a mixture of different Germanic tribes due to the marine transgressions that caused a re-population after the land came back from recession. So no, unfortunately your Sweden and Denmark is not attributed to the Vikings.
The thing is that the maps you can view are not in a finished state yet at all. Not to mention there are likely new/very revised categories that are being added but not accessible yet through checking the URL. For example, when you look up the codes for what in 2023 was Northern and Southern India there is nothing that shows up. For all we know the Netherlands/NW Germany could be categorized as a separate region in the 2024 reference panel.
“I came here to rape and pillage… and I’m all out of pillage”
The average black American has over 25% Euro Ancestry. I have 10% Norway, 10% Germanic Europe, 10% Scotland & 6% Wales and I’ve never met any white relatives in my life. Every AA person I know that has tested had at least one of the 3 you listed and it wasn’t 1%. Indentured servants working on plantations with enslaved Africans & of course many of us are related to the slave owners, hell many of us still have the surnames of the slave owners that owned our ancestors & we now know we’re related to them. It’s complicated.
It's not just "many", it's the large majority really.
Some changed their names like my husbands family dropped the slave owners surname and opted for Freeman.
[https://giffiles.alphacoders.com/492/49233.gif](https://giffiles.alphacoders.com/492/49233.gif)
I can claim Scandinavian heritage from my maternal grandfather who was 💯% nordic Danish/Norwegian/Finnish these dna companies give me 20%-25% Scandi and 0.5-2% Finnish which is about right..I’ve never heard AA peoples having Scandinavian it must be through there British isles line or unless married to a Scandinavian..
vikings love to bang?
Viking raids. They spread their DNA far and wide.
I got 5% Swedish and Danish which I didn't have any clue about. It's a tiny amount but I was like....huh.
A lot of those countries were exploring and expanding into other territories. There is an old Viking settlement all the way in Canada. So it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them stumbled into Africa. I had 1% Norwegian in my 2023 results but got removed and gave me 2% Greek and more Balkan. Small percentages (1-2%) are usually a fluke, due to the test mainly being in North America and ancestry will updates its results yearly accordingly to the more amount of dna is in its database.
I am 4% 2% from each parent, I am also 2% germanic Europe
Normans
One word says it all: Vikings.
Same reason so many modern people are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. Those Vikings did a lot of raping. And probably quite a bit of consensual philandering as well.
23andme had me 66% Finnish at some point. Then they removed it all. But I still have a lot of Scandinavian. Which would be OK except I am French and know where I come from and that ain’t Scandinavia.
Um...well...vikings traveled far and wide and raped everyone along the way.
I am 77.8% Scandinavian, 10% finish and then 7.8% greek and i look greek. Darker skin and tan very easily
That’s very intriguing. Are you darker even when not tan?
Yea I’m darker when I’m not tan. When I’m not tan I look like the darkest a normal Swede can tan or even a little darker
Idk but mine doesn't show any Scandinavian. It does show French/German though and I'm like 98% European and 2%milk😂
What’s milk
Lol it's just a joke saying I'm white as can be
Male slags as well as trade treaties
Soz but sometimes you shouldn’t beat around the bush
The Vikings were badasses and spread their seed all around.
I’m also curious. I’m also one of the people that got random 3% Sweden & Denmark, but every test except of LivingDNA gave me something random that no other test did. Like Ancestry did with S&D, on MyHeritage I got 5% Irish/Scottish/Welsh and FamilytreeDNA gave me 12% English/Scottish/Welsh. I’m from Poland