High Scandinavian results for German ancestry DNA - is this common?

[SamuelF992]

Hi all

Just got my girlfriend's DNA results back earlier and we were quite surprised. Her grandmother was from Bavaria, and as far as that side of the family know they've always been German. However, the largest ethnicity group in my gf's AncestryDNA test was Scandinavian (35%) with Europe South and West only coming in at 13% and 10% respectively. Is such a result fairly common with German DNA? I'd be less surprised if they were from Northern Germany, but it surprised me coming from Bavaria. (We're from the UK and the rest of my girlfriend's ancestors are from the British Isles.)

Best wishes

Samuel

[davidft]

have a look at this thread and it might help explain things i.e ethnicity results are not reliable

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=791698.0

there are many many threads on here that say the same thing and why if you want to look through this sub forum (Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing)

[hdw]

I agree that Bavarian is very different from Scandinavian, but I do wonder if they conflate Anglo-Saxon - or at least the Anglian part - with Scandinavian. My original results from FTDNA FamilyFinder showed 32% West and Central Europe, which I took to mean Anglo-Saxon, then they changed their minds and my revised results showed 33% Scandinavian. As Angeln is on the Danish-German border I suppose you could regard the Angles as either German or Scandinavian. But, yes, no way can Bavarians be confused with Scandinavians.
Harry
P.S. MyHeritage allot me a mere 19.3% Scandinavian but they are also kind enough to make me 4.9% Finnish and 4.7% Baltic

[SamuelF992]

Sorry guys, didn't see these replies.

Yes it's very odd, especially as her dad's and maternal grandad's family are English. I think you're both right though on sample populations and overlap. I expect there's a lot of similarity between Danish, German and Anglo-Saxon DNA and they've blended them into one. I put it through GEDMATCH and it made a lot more sense. Much more 'mixed German', 'West German' and 'Southeast English'.

Thanks both
Sam