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| Hans and Petra Skari |
I went ahead and sent my spit to a DNA company, because I feel there is such a thing as too much privacy, and also because I was curious about my genetic heritage. Lots of you have done the same thing, including some 589 close relatives of mine, which is extraordinary, inasmuch as I thought my family tree had been reduced to a stump with a few of us suckers coming out of it. (I haven’t paid the extra to be introduced to these people, because of the risk they’d be a lot like me.)
I generally describe myself as half Norwegian. Americans like to do that. We have only the single citizenship and no familiarity with other languages or cultures or anything but you ask any of your basic paler Americans what they “are” and they’ll start ticking countries off their fingers. We’re real proud of our immigrant heritage as long as it has at least a few decades of antiquity to it. So I say I’m half Norwegian because my mom’s parents were both from the old country and it was assumed their parents were too, and so on and so forth. I describe the other half as a dull mixture of pasty peoples in the English realm, but don’t get too specific. I figure they’re all interchangeable anyway.
But I was surprised to discover that I actually am 43.7% Norwegian. Surprised, because this DNA business goes back a long way and it seems to me people should have moved around a bit more than that, or, in the case of the Vikings, conquered more people than that, and so I would have expected my DNA to reflect inferior vanquished overrun peoples’ DNA. Your Russian, your French, Spanish, Welsh, Irish, Greek, Italian, maybe even some Mi’kmaq from Newfoundland. Could I possibly have come from Viking stock? Oh looky there! I’m 0.4% Northern African! The Vikings conquered Morocco in 845. Boo-yah!
So I am quite tickled about the results, because mild-mannered folk like myself like to imagine we harbor an inner Viking. Robust! Hearty! Swinging a broadsword through a cranium like it was butter! In fact–if we are what we eat–buttery! And that includes us womenfolk, with our fat blond braids tucked into our belts alongside our battle axes, ready to bash people over the head with our krumkake irons. Uff da!
All I’ve got to threaten people with is writing them into my novels.
Anyway, sure enough, the rest of the story was mixed and pasty. Until we get to the good stuff. The stuff I was most interested in.
Yes, folks, read it and weep. I have way more Neanderthal in me than most of you. Nearly 4%. The reconstructions of Neanderthal skeletons are not as dreadful-looking as most people imagine, I’ll have you know. The Neanderthal is short and stocky and has thicker, denser facial bones than their skinny-ass compatriots in the H. sapiens school. I can relate. I am short and–oh, let’s substitute “sturdy” for “stocky,” why don’t we–and I have empirical evidence that my head is not fragile, because I keep falling on it, and nothing has spilled out. Between my inner Vikings and Neanderthals I’m pretty sure I could keep my smug inner Irish and English portions in line. I like to think they didn’t contribute much to the wonder that is me.
Maybe just the eyebrows.
Since the Neanderthals co-existed with the Cro-Magnon, it seems likely that they were the more peaceful race, and the Cro-Magnon the more warlike race who wiped them all out — but not before taking some of their women, hence the Neanderthal DNA that most people seem to have. Maybe I just have a fertile imagination, but we ARE a warlike species, and Cro-Magnon dominates our DNA. If this theory is correct (and — what the hell — even if it doesn't), I think you should say it loud: "I'm Neanderthal, and I'm proud!"
Well I am. I am a proud Neanderthal-American.
Fascinating, ain't it? I have some Irish, too, but there is no direct lineage unless you go way way back on my Icelandic bits. Then again if you go back fifty thousand or one hundred thousand years ago we are all African. Technically, we are all African-American in this country if taken that far. There are some folks who wouldn't take too kindly to that notion, though.
Did you know (interesting tidbit) that the probable reason there are so many large animals left in Africa is that they evolved along with us and learned to fear us? And when we spread out around the globe, we were able to walk up to any local megafauna and club them on the head. Extinct.
Don't get too tied to your Norwegian roots. I was 27% Scandinavian until this year, when I am no longer. Seems that as more and more testing is done on more and more people, things change. Now I'm not even 1% Scandinavian—and when I was there two years ago, I kept seeing people who looked like me, could have been "my people," but now they aren't.
No, that ain't right. Do they send you updates, then?
This was from Ancestry; they didn't send an update. I just got curious one day and looked at the results again and the page explained the changes.
This is something I have not done. I like mystery. Perhaps because they are often more appealing (to those with a VERY fertile imagination) than fact. Pretty certain most of me would fit the pasty faced description though).
Honestly? I think I did it for the blog post.
I'm like Elephant's Child, above. I don't want to be disabused of the family's legend of being part "Black Irish", i.e., "Another theory of the origin of the term 'Black Irish' is that these people were descendants of Spanish traders who settled in Ireland and even descendants of the few Spanish sailors who were washed up on the west coast of Ireland after the disaster that was the 'Spanish Armada' of 1588. It is claimed that the Spanish married into Irish society and created a new class of Irish who were immediately recognisable by their dark hair and complexion. There is little evidence to support this theory and it is unlikely that any significant number of Spanish soldiers would have survived long in the war-torn place that was sixteenth century Ireland."
I feel like the whole myth is appealingly quaint.
See, now you HAVE to do it!
I did the same thing and I end up pasty past white Scandinavian and English and Welsh and….. very very boring but I have no eyebrows. Gosh I was hoping for some real excitement….. Jerry did his too…
What the heck is it with the eyebrows? Was eyebrows too much to ask for?
Now I'm wondering just how much Swedish is in me, but I can't be spending money on any testing. I'm not tall and blonde though, being of the short chunky variety, with strong bones, so maybe a smidge of Neanderthal. I may look into just exactly how much $$$ I have to spend to find out for sure.
Maybe you're Swedish from the neck up, or something, with a solid Neanderthal base.
Strictly North Carolina Scots-Irish-English, me, as pasty as they come. Probably a pack of librarians involved. And I was longing for some exotic tidbit in my DNA, but there was nary a jot. One probably must pay more for exotic.
Gee, almost everyone finds some Ashkenazi Jew, for some reason.
On the privacy issue, you might want to read this from The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/10/dna-ancestry-tests-cheap-data-price-companies-23andme
On the validity issue, knittergran's comment is right on the money. As more people contribute their DNA samples, the results for other individuals may change.
I read an illuminating article recently about a reporter who had submitted DNA samples to several different companies and got quite different results, but now I can't find the article. Of course.
I look at it as a slightly more upscale edition of palm-reading.
Like some of you. I rather like being "mysterious" although I do know I have recent Scandinavian lines on my mother's side. I think there may have been some German on my father's side, but they probably kept that pretty quiet in England at the time! Then again…Battenberg only "became" Mountbetten, the genes didn't change.
Oh I'm happy enough knowing some Danes and Swedes figured in the English mix.Though I'd have been happy having some darker blood.This business of having bits of me cut away is not much fun!
Skin cancer? I was blaming that on my now-gone Scandinavian ancestry, so now I have to just blame the Irish and UK.
Ooo, I hate that too. You know what else I was thinking? That there was such a push to give people DNA tests for Christmas presents–and how many dads out there were dead set against it….
For me, I am Swedish all the way (defined as three generations) back on both sides, but my mother has passed along the rumor that some gypsy blood snuck in there somewhere. I like sticking with the mystery (and am stingy with the money – makes me grab the rumors of inconsistent results as an excuse not to plop down some dough to find the facts.)
Nah. You're just cheap. 🙂
My old history prof used to say you could give a Neanderthal a haircut, put him in a suit, hand him a briefcase and you'd never notice him on the subway. Wonder how he'd fare on e-Harmony? I sit at the 97th percentile, i.e. compared to other homo sapiens only 3% have more Neanderthal DNA than I have. Otherwise my DNA results came back pretty much as expected, with one monumental surprise.
About 45 of my 1st and 2nd cousins from my Dad's two sides have tested. I'd documented these lines through standard genealogical methods years before. Dad's mother's family has Welsh and Native roots, with some African in the pot because my native ancestors rescued the survivors of a wrecked slave ship in the mid-1600s and the Africans integrated into the tribe. Dad's 1st language was his family's tribal language.
Dad's father was born in Hampshire, England and was brought to Texas as a six-month-old infant by his parents. But we have one of the families (The Viking Iliefe/Yelf) mentioned in Michael Wood's "Story of England" and that got the family interested in testing. So at the annual family reunion of my British great-grandparents a few years ago all the surviving g-grands (70-to-90-year-olds) and many gg-grands decided to test. I work with genetics so was project admin.
As I entered the data it became clear that our great-grandmother from Hampshire was 1/4 Native American and African, and what's more, she shared exactly the same Native/African gg-grandfather DNA as my *father's mother*!
In the 1700's the British did slave raids up and down the Carolina Coast. In March 1713 they killed 900 men and captured 1000 women and children from our tribe to sell to Jamaican plantation owners.
It was a great fashion in Britain in the 18th century for wealthy women to be followed by little Black page boys dressed in elaborate costumes, carrying m'lady's pocketbook, parasol, parcels, lapdog, smelling salts, whatever. The wealthier the lady the more page boys. So they took four and five year-old boys from their slave mothers in Jamaica and shipped them to England to serve as "fashion accessories"
But when they became teenaged, gangly, pimply and moody they got moved along to groomsmen, gardeners, or if they were useless and surly, they were sent back to the cane fields of Jamaica. It was illegal to teach 'a Negro' a trade, but out in the boonies away from London masters sometimes arranged positions for favourite boys (who very well might be their own sons). They paid a local village family to adopt the boy, have him baptized and from that point he was a part of village life.
And that is what happened to my ancestor. While British infants were usually baptized within days of birth, he was 16 years old at baptism. Who could fabricate such a tale and have anyone believe it?
He married six years later, having learned the thatcher's trade from his adopted father, and left a large crop of children and grandchildren. All his English descendants who have tested match my American Native cousins. And when my grandparents married in 1890 they had no idea that they were distant cousins.
Fascinating! I think there's a novel in here somewhere.