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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: rubymelia on Sunday 17 May 20 17:22 BST (UK)
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Hi,
I have recently done my DNA ethnicity test via Ancestry.com which came out with 75& Irish/Scottish and 22% English/Wales (which is what I was expecting), however I have 3% Norwegian which covers Norway and Iceland however I have not come across any indication of having Norwegian ancestors?
I know that I have black ancestry (5th ggf) which showed up on my mothers DNA ancestry as ~1%, so I am assuming that Norwegian ancestors would have been fairly recent? Does anyone have any ideas of how far back 3% would represent?
Any answers/help are welcomed, thank you!
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Many folks in the UK have around 2 or 3% Scandinavian in their ethnicity estimates. In many cases it comes from too far back to be able to identify the ancestors that contributed it.
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Many folks in the UK have around 2 or 3% Scandinavian in their ethnicity estimates. In many cases it comes from too far back to be able to identify the ancestors that contributed it.
Thank you for your reply, do you have any idea why this would show up and not the black ancestry that showed up in my mother's DNA results? Thanks
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Many folks in the UK have around 2 or 3% Scandinavian in their ethnicity estimates. In many cases it comes from too far back to be able to identify the ancestors that contributed it.
Thank you for your reply, do you have any idea why this would show up and not the black ancestry that showed up in my mother's DNA results? Thanks
Don't forget, you only get on average 50% of your DNA from each parent, so presumably your figures for black ancestry are just too small to be picked up on the ancestry test. Your 2-3% Scandinavian genes are probably from your father.
Having said that, the ethnicity aspect of the tests is quite questionable anyway and not something to take very seriously.
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Wouldn't 3% be 1/32? That would be your great great great grandparents.
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Wouldn't 3% be 1/32? That would be your great great great grandparents.
But that doesn't imply a Norwegian great great great grandparent. It just means that this part of your DNA heritage comes from a part of the country where these genes are in wide circulation, such as Yorkshire or Cumbria.
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I have 2% Sweden/Denmark.
I have traced my Ancestors back to Normandy and beyond but as you can assume it was many many generations ago.
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According to Ancestry, I have 3% Scandinavian ancestry with a range of 0 to 5% . So far I've not found any ancestor who might give me this amount. I have Scottish (west coast), North Wales and NW Midlands ancestry and possibly some Irish way back, which might add up.
I still take Ancestry's ethnicity estimates with a big pinch of salt, although they might be getting better.
Other sites give a different ethnicity estimate. All depend on the reference population that they sample.
Gadget
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Wouldn't 3% be 1/32? That would be your great great great grandparents.
Not if it is a cumulation of smaller amounts from many more distant ancestors. Scandinavian DNA in the ethnicity estimates is often identifiable in areas which were settled by Viking raiders.
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Wouldn't 3% be 1/32? That would be your great great great grandparents.
Not if it is a cumulation of smaller amounts from many more distant ancestors. Scandinavian DNA in the ethnicity estimates is often identifiable in areas which were settled by Viking raiders.
I have studied many people's results and ancestry to try and make sense of the Sweden/Norway results and it does seem it is delivering some real insight into people from areas of high Viking settlement having a significant % of genes which are more similar to people in Norway or Sweden than, say, to northern Germany, Friesland etc. People with a lot of Yorkshire-Lincolnshire-Norfolk ancestry may have around 10% in total, people from Orkneys very high, up to 30%.
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Family Tree DNA give me 33% "Scandinavian", MyHeritage make it 19.3% but add in bits of Finnish and Baltic which are also "northern".
FTDNA give me 11% Iberian and 3% Jewish diaspora, MyHeritage makes it 6.8% Iberian, 2.1% Italian and tiny amounts of West Africa and Nigeria.
And having traced every branch of my family on both sides back to at least the 1700s, sometimes further back, they are all Scottish or north Northumbrian near the Scottish border or Ulster Presbyterian with Scottish surnames.
One thing that puzzles me is, we are told that you don't inherit DNA from all the ancestors in your family-tree, so for example I may have proven 3 x great-grandparents from the 18th century none of whose DNA has come down to me. So how come I have all that exotic DNA showing up in a test which must go back for hundreds or maybe thousands of years?
Harry
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FTDNA have not updated their ethnicity estimates for many years and they show very high Scandinavian. They have me at 25% as compared with 2-3% elsewhere. MyHeritage have a major update to their ethnicity estimates scheduled for this year.
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So how come I have all that exotic DNA showing up in a test which must go back for hundreds or maybe thousands of years?
Harry
Because it's not "exotic DNA" it's part of the normal DNA make-up of the population that lives in those areas.
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I have 4% norwegian and my last name is cochran but idk who i am related to.
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MyHeritage have a major update to their ethnicity estimates scheduled for this year.
I think they're currently working their way through them now, as I am currently getting this below message with my child's DNA :
"The ethnicity results for this kit are currently being generated. Please check back here tomorrow to see the updated results."
My own isn't showing the message, and my ethnicity hasn't changed .Perhaps they're working their way through them in batches . Anyway, it looks as if my child's is currently in the process of being updated.
I wonder what they'll have me as when they update it . My ethnicity on Myheritage is absolutely comical . According to them I am almost 50% Scandinavian, 47% to be exact and 15% Iberian, and my child has 0 of these ethnicities , go figure lol. How could I possibly not pass any at all ( not even 1%) of that whopping amount in me onto my child lol.
Ancestry's ethnicity is pretty much near to correct with both mine and my child's, they give a break down for me, of half Irish and Scottish , my mum and all her ancestors are from Ireland, with many of them who came to Ireland from Scotland a few hundred years back.
And the other half me from my Welsh father is majority Welsh with a little English 7% and 2% Denmark - don't know where the Denmark is coming in, and probably wont ever know as too far back to trace, that's if it is even correct)
I can't wait to see what MyHeritage has in store for me with their updated version, I wonder if I'll lose all my lovely Scandinavian and Iberian, or perhaps they'll go the whole hog and make me 100% Scandinavian and Iberian lol ( as I am currently sitting on 62 % Scandinavian and Iberian combined with them . I do not have any ancestors from those regions at all , well not in the past few hundreds of years for 100% sure ,and 100% DNA proven ) .
None of my full 1st cousins ( I have maternal and a paternal 1st cousin on my heritage ) ,or any other of my cousin's have this lovely Scandinavian and Iberian in their ethnicities , goodness what they have done to mine lol . I think Myheritage's computer was drunk as a skunk when it came to interpreting my ethnicity ;D
I can't wait for their update, hopefully it will amuse me some more .
Kind regards
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After reading this thread, I had a look with what Ancestry have come up with for my ethnicity on their latest update. For the Central Southern England, it has helpfully broken the communities down to:
Dorset to Greater London
Dorset, Hampshire & Surrounding Area
Oxfordshire & West Berkshire Area
Northeastern South West England & Northwestern South East England
Counties I understand, but how is Northeastern South West England & Northwestern South East England different to the other three regions ???
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DNA Ethnicity ESTIMATES are about as accurate as Astrology!
Not to be relied on ;)
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DNA Ethnicity ESTIMATES are about as accurate as Astrology!
Not to be relied on ;)
I would agree with very tiny percentages being unreliable. But when you find you have close to 50% of a completely unexpected ethnicity - your supposed father's line being from NE England / S Scotland and your supposed mother being from Central Southern England (these two areas made up the other near 50% almost equally), you begin to believe there is something to it. Especially when your only "sibling" is a sister 19 years older than yourself.
Not me, but a near relative, our shared matches confirmed his "mother"'s (actually grandmother's) family.
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MyHeritage have a major update to their ethnicity estimates scheduled for this year.
I think they're currently working their way through them now, as I am currently getting this below message with my child's DNA :
"The ethnicity results for this kit are currently being generated. Please check back here tomorrow to see the updated results."
My own isn't showing the message, and my ethnicity hasn't changed .Perhaps they're working their way through them in batches . Anyway, it looks as if my child's is currently in the process of being updated.
I wonder what they'll have me as when they update it . My ethnicity on Myheritage is absolutely comical . According to them I am almost 50% Scandinavian, 47% to be exact and 15% Iberian, and my child has 0 of these ethnicities , go figure lol. How could I possibly not pass any at all ( not even 1%) of that whopping amount in me onto my child lol.
Ancestry's ethnicity is pretty much near to correct with both mine and my child's, they give a break down for me, of half Irish and Scottish , my mum and all her ancestors are from Ireland, with many of them who came to Ireland from Scotland a few hundred years back.
And the other half me from my Welsh father is majority Welsh with a little English 7% and 2% Denmark - don't know where the Denmark is coming in, and probably wont ever know as too far back to trace, that's if it is even correct)
I can't wait to see what MyHeritage has in store for me with their updated version, I wonder if I'll lose all my lovely Scandinavian and Iberian, or perhaps they'll go the whole hog and make me 100% Scandinavian and Iberian lol ( as I am currently sitting on 62 % Scandinavian and Iberian combined with them . I do not have any ancestors from those regions at all , well not in the past few hundreds of years for 100% sure ,and 100% DNA proven ) .
None of my full 1st cousins ( I have maternal and a paternal 1st cousin on my heritage ) ,or any other of my cousin's have this lovely Scandinavian and Iberian in their ethnicities , goodness what they have done to mine lol . I think Myheritage's computer was drunk as a skunk when it came to interpreting my ethnicity ;D
I can't wait for their update, hopefully it will amuse me some more .
Kind regards
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just checked mine and it seems to be pretty much the same as they had before ( it was showing the “ being updated “ message) including a ridiculously large 24.9% Scandinavian. This was an upload of Ancestry dna done when it was free. Ancestry gives me 5% Swedish/ Danish and Norwegian which I can accept from my East Anglian ancestry .
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Worth reading some of the previous posts on here.
Communities are nothing to do with ethnicity regions determined through laboratory examination of your DNA. They are derived in a similar way to Thrulines by Ancestry trawling through your tree and those of your DNA matches, looking for common areas of residence shown in the trees of autosomally related ancestors.
Ethnicity is derived from laboratory examination of your DNA. However it is important to recognise that the percentages shown are ESTIMATES and subject to constant reassessment and verification.
A particular percentage cannot be used to determine how many generations back a particular ethnicity is linked. That's not how it works. It is completely different to autosomal relative matching and less precise.
Ancestry say that ethnicity estimates are indicative of ethnicity derived between 500 to several thousand years ago, so generally well beyond the reach of autosomal matching and documentary research into ancestral lineage.
The "headline" ethnicity percentages shown are an overall estimate representing a range of probability for each region. If you drill down into each regional estimate in your results you will find that the actual range may vary widely from the headline percentage shown. For a 3% headline estimate and similar low figures for instance, it isn't at all unusual for the actual estimated range to include a probability of 0% - in other words the possibility that there may actually be no relationship to that region at all.
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Unlikely you are going to find a specific ancestor for it, unless you are lucky to make it enough to make some sort of nobility claim, where you are from in the UK might have an impact on the scandinavian you get, my dads side is from North East and due to this in alot of DNA tests with high percentages of Scandinavian