DNA Ethnicity Estimates, or Why do they keep saying I’m Scandinavian?

 I am not usually an early adopter. In fact,  my middle name could very well be Cautious, with a capital “C.”  I will research an expenditure, an acquisition, or an impending experience until I have become a walking encyclopedia on my latest interest. For most people this would suck the joy out of the venture, but for me it is a source of added pleasure.  Insane, right?

Occasionally, however, the “Frenzy Fairy” will hit me with her pixie dust, and I will plunge into something without so much as a backward glance.  That is my only explanation of why, in 2012, when I received the email from Ancestry about being a beta tester for their new DNA product, I signed up immediately.   Well, that and the fact it was only going to cost me $9.99 for shipping.  (Don’t worry, Ancestry has more than made bank from me with that little investment.)

So, I spat into the tube and waited. At the time, I had been working on my family history for about a decade.  

As I was digitally rummaging to see if I had the original screenshot of their ethnicity predictions, I found my own prediction of what I thought the results would be.  

My predictions were:

73% Central European (All that German ancestry, plus some Swiss, Dutch and a wee bit of French)

25% British Isles  (English and Irish)

1% Native American  

1%  African American

Okay, the final two were a stretch, but one could always hope.

Wait!  Where were they getting the Scandinavian ethnicity, or the Southern European?

I asked my mom to do the test, so I could see where these regions were coming from.

Um, mom pretty much had the Ancestry I thought I should have.  Shouldn’t she and I at least be half a match with our ethnicities? I looked quickly to see what relationship they had assigned to us.  Okay, I could relax, we were parent and child. 

At the end of 2013, a new estimate for ethnicity came out from Ancestry.

33% Eastern Europe?  Mom only had 3% Eastern Europe with this update, so that meant it came from Dad’s side of the family.  Dad’s mother was 100% German, and there was no Slavic ancestry to be found in the rest of his family tree.  So, I took a second look at his German ancestors. 

To my surprise, I found that before Germans settled in the area near the Baltic Sea, two Western Slavic tribes had lived in the region.  The two groups had intermingled and more importantly, intermarried. Up until 1795, the very church where my ancestors had worshipped had a service given in a Slavic language. Ancestry had pointed out a part of my ethnic history that I hadn’t even known existed.  I still couldn’t account for the Scandinavian heritage.

Of course, Ancestry has had many updates since.  On one update, I was happy to see Welsh listed among my ethnic roots.  The next one, the Welsh was gone from my results, and my brother suddenly found a bit of Welsh in his.

Below are my latest ethnicity estimates from three different vendors.  

ANCESTRY  

FAMILY TREE

My Heritage 

They don’t agree on much except that I still have that darn Scandinavian in my estimates. 

Each vendor uses their own reference populations. They each have their own procedures that ultimately become  their estimate of your personal ethnicity. Family Tree and Ancestry have white papers explaining exactly what is involved in making estimates.  Remember, if a portion of your DNA does not fit perfectly into one of their identified regions, that bit of DNA will be put into an ethnicity that it most closely matches.

My point is that you do not necessarily need to panic if your results do not match your expectations, or even your own family members. There could be valid reasons. As Ancestry says, “It’s not an exact science.”  However, if your DNA matches are not what you expect, then there could be an issue. Ancestry has prepared a page to go over those issues along with links that may help. That page is here. 

As for my Scandinavian mystery, there were Viking settlements in England, Ireland, along the Baltic coast, some parts of Central Europe, into Russia, and as far south as present-day Kyiv.  My ancestors lived in many of those regions. Maybe the answer to the mystery is this:  I have Viking DNA that is still circulating in my genes a thousand years after the fact. To that I say, “SKÅL!”

Sources:

1.            Ancestry Ethnicity Results, www.Ancestry.com, Accessed 18 June 2012.

2.            Ancestry Ethnicity Results, www.Ancestry.com, Accessed 29 March 2013.

3.            Ancestry Ethnicity Results, www.Ancestry.com, Accessed 3 Oct 2013.

4.            Kashubia, Home of the Baltic Slavs – written originally in Polish by Jaroslaw Ellwart, translated to German by Peter Oliver Loew, and abridged and supplemented English translation by John M. Hingst and Liesel Herchenroether Hingst, 2000. PDF version Accessed 20 July 2020.

5.            Ancestry Ethnicity Results, www.Ancestry.com, Accessed 27 Dec 2022.

6.            Family Tree Ethnicity Results, www.Familytreedna.com, Accessed 28 Dec 2022.

7.            My Heritage Ethnicity Results, www.Myheritage.com, Accessed 28 Dec 2022.

8.            AncestryDNA® White Papers, https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/AncestryDNA-White-Papers, Accessed 28 Dec 2022.

9.            myOrigins 3.0 White Paper, https://blog.familytreedna.com/myorigins-3-0-white-paper/, Accessed 28 Dec. 2022.

10.          Discover more about DNA matches, https://www.ancestry.com/c/dna/unexpected-dna-matches, Accessed 4 Feb 2023.

11.          Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Viking". Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Dec. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Viking-people, Accessed 27 Dec 2022.

© 4 February 2023, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder