Scandinavian DNA in long-term Netherlands families
Someone in one of my family branches was surprised to find 31% Scandinavian DNA in her largely Netherlands-German family. I've looked back to the early 1800s on every branch of her ancestors and they're all born in the Netherlands or Germany. My mother's side was likewise long-term Netherlands, and I'm 16% Scandinavian with no known Scandinavian ancestor. Is this common? Even with no Scandinavian ancestor for multiple generations, we're collecting this much DNA from all the others? What's your Scandinavian % in a Netherlands and/or German family?
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I'm half Dutch and get 4% Sweden and Denmark at AncestryDNA, 2.5% Finnish at MyHeritageDNA and 16% Scandinavia at FamilyTreeDNA. But I also have some English ancestry, including ancestors from areas settled by Vikings.
None of these companies have a "Dutch" category for the ethnicity estimates. Dutch DNA will therefore be assigned to the most similiar category, which will tend to be either British, German or Scandinavian. All of these groups have common Germanic heritage dating back to about 2,000 years ago and can be hard to tell apart genetically.
MyHeritage's ethnicity estimates are 5+ years old and despite many promises have never been improved and are generally considered to be fairly inaccurate. FamilyTreeDNA hasn't updated theirs for a while as well. AncestryDNA is the only one of these three that is putting effort into improving and refining their estimates and usually releases an update every 12 months.
In conclusion, I wouldn't be too concerned about your ethnicity results. It is more likely that the "Scandinavian" DNA is actually Dutch DNA than from a recent Scandinavian ancestor.
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@A van Helsdingen @Douglas A Wagner
My mother was also Dutch,father Belgian, and my dna samples are not very different from the above quoted.
Fragmentary parts of some possible explanations are hidden in the geografical past.The most striking example is Doggerland;....the North sea was not always there,and people could actually walk from todays England to the European mainland and work and trade here,..the wash-out separation of the North sea came after that.Also, for the part of the Scandinavian/Finnish component;-the Hanseatic League stretched as far as above St Petersburg, even to the Finnisher Meerbusen, (!)see map on Hanseatic League.Also , many bodies of water around Scandianavia where frozen during the ice ages.(walkable)
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