LivingDNA Question: Germany/Denmark/Norway??

[waltematec]

Hi All,

I recently did my test through LivingDNA.

My yDNA is heavily Germanic (R1b-u106) (ancestors on my father's family tree were born in and immigrated to the USA pretty much exclusively from Germany)
Netherlands 35%
England 35%
Germany 25%
Denmark 25%
Norway 25%
Belgium 25%

And my mtDNA is heavily Northern Scandinavia (U5) (ancestors on my mother's family tree were born in and immigrated to the USA pretty much exclusively from France)
Saami 58%
Norway 56%
Sweden 26%
Finland 17%

My Autosomal was weird and gave me nearly all UK, a small percentage of Scandinavian, and a few other countries. 0% Germany and 0% France
I read more, at it said that LivingDNA's samples usually come from the UK since it is a UK based company, and Germanic DNA is easily mistaken for UK DNA. This gives me a loose confirmation of Germanic DNA, but I can't specifically determine if my ancestors were Anglo, Saxon, Jute, or Norse/Viking from this, all are possibilities as Germanic DNA covers all of them, and they all settled various areas of the UK.

When I clicked on the timeline feature, Germany showed up but Scandinavia was still darker (Scandinavia and UK were the darkest on the map). When I get to from around 800 AD to present day on the timeline slider, Scandinavia seems to drop off sharply from the darkest region to almost nothing while the other countries stay about the same. In addition, through my genealogy research, I traced my mother's side back to Normandy around the 1700's or so. This to me explains the connection to Norway/Saami on my mtDNA and the sharp drop in my Autosomal from Scandinavia between 800-1000AD (Normans).

I downloaded my raw data and uploaded it to GEDMatch and ran a few tests. I ran my Modern Admixture and it gave me hot spots in Netherlands, Northern Germany, Denmark, and Norway.
I then ran my ancient ancestry and it gave me this:

---------------------------------------------------------------

# Population (source) Distance
1 Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 5.02
2 Alberstedt_LN_I0118 5.08
3 Halberstadt_LBA_I0099 6.57
4 Unetice_EBA_I0117 6.66

Mixed Mode Population Sharing:

# Primary Population (source) Secondary Population (source) Distance
1 62.1% Sintashta_MBA_RISE_386 + 37.9% Baalberge_MN_I0560 1.72
2 86.8% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 13.2% Hungary_CA_I1497 1.87
3 87.9% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 12.1% Hungary_EN_I0495 1.98
4 89.3% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 10.7% Stuttgart_SG 2.02
5 87.5% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 12.5% Iceman_MN_SG 2.03
6 87.5% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 12.5% Epserstedt_MN_I0172 2.05
7 87% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 13% Baalberge_MN_I0560 2.06
8 88.8% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 11.2% Remedello_BA_SG_RISE489 2.06
9 89.1% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 10.9% LBK_EN_I0054 2.07
10 89.7% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 10.3% Starcevo_MN_I0174 2.12
11 88.7% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 11.3% Iberia_EN_I0412 2.13
12 87.2% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 12.8% Iberia_M_ I0406 2.17
13 88.3% Nordic_LN_SG_RISE97 + 11.7% Iberia_Chalcolithic_I0300 2.2

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would naturally assume that my Nordic ancestry comes from my mom's side as it is strongly Norwegian/Saami and R1b-U106(S21+) is strongly German, but while reading about U106 I found some interesting articles that say that U106 moved northward into Scandinavia around 1700BC and occupied Germany, Denmark, and Western Norway exclusively until around 200AD. Then from 200AD-900AD it dispersed through out Europe. U106(S21+) was also one of the 3 main Haplogroups of the Ancient Norse, second to I1-M253.

So this makes me wonder: my mtDNA shows 0% Denmark, so if I have Danish ancestry, it would have likely come from my father's side.

Could my heritage be showing Nordic from a combination of Norway from my mom and Denmark/Norway from my dad? Or is it a better bet that it’s just exclusively from my mom’s side?

However, my yDNA (U106) is also found in all 3 countries equally: Norway (25%), Denmark (25%), and Germany (25%).
Another point, if you consider both my yDNA and mtDNA results collectively, my Norwegian lineage is very high, as Norway is really the only common country found on both sides of any substantial percentage (56% on my mtDNA and 25% on my yDNA).

Every test that I have done has used words like "Scandinavia" and "Nordic" with the exception of my yDNA and mtDNA, and haven't given me specific country names. Given the information here, is it safe to assume that the Nordic ancestry comes exclusively from my mom's side, or is there enough U106 in Denmark and Norway to possibly have contributed too? Also, should I assume Norway contributed more to my genetics than Denmark or even Germany or France (as it gave me 0% for Germany AND France on my Autosomal from LivingDNA)?

I'm RELATIVELY new to this, so forgive any lapses in logic, I'm trying to connect the dots. That being said, I have done a LOT of reading on the subject since taking the test at LivingDNA. Lastly, I realize that my mtDNA and yDNA only make up a small portion of my overall ancestry, but it's all that I have to go off of. Any insight is welcome!

[Jessie]

There is a LivingDNA section on here so you might get more responses if you post in there.

Is it possible for you to post your Complete LivingDNA breakdown? It would be interesting to see what they assigned for you.

The problem with LivingDNA is that they don't have enough samples from other areas at the moment so a lot of people will get British results without having much British ancestry.

[timberwolf]

There is a LivingDNA section on here so you might get more responses if you post in there.

Is it possible for you to post your Complete LivingDNA breakdown? It would be interesting to see what they assigned for you.

The problem with LivingDNA is that they don't have enough samples from other areas at the moment so a lot of people will get British results without having much British ancestry.

Jesse how much Irish did LivingDNA assign you?

[Jessie]

Jesse how much Irish did LivingDNA assign you?

I got quite a bit. From memory it was 47%. My daughter though only got 11+%. Half her ancestry is from the Wexford/Dublin area so that might confuse the algorithms a bit as well. I think myself and brother had one of the highest amounts of Irish on LivingDNA judging from other Irish results.

[waltematec]

Sure,
I did happen to find a break down in the sub regions of the UK of contributing regions. From here, my German and French do show up, though they didn’t on the initial break down. Taking those into account, this is what it gave me:

Great Britain & Ireland = 47.10%
Scandinavia = 13.73%
France = 11.29%
Germany = 10.94%
Spain = 5.04%
Belgium = 3.91%
North Turkey = 3.7%
West Balkans = 1.6%
Baltics = 1.3%
Tuscany = 1.3%

[JohnHowellsTyrfro]

If you are interested in finding out more about your Y U106 you should consider joining the Yahoo Group Project. However to find out more would require further "Y" testing which can be relatively expensive. Unfortunately there are no easy answers to "country of ancient origin"at present unless you are very lucky and find Y matches which may give a clue. However the more people who test, the more we will find out.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/...tty_Byrnes_DNA

[waltematec]

True. My paternal cousin took the LivingDNA test as well. He had lower Scandinavian and his ancient ancestry specifically said Germany. But I feel like my aunt’s genetics probably impacted that a lot, as she’s not related to me by blood. (His father is my father’s brother). There’s also always the chance that my father inherited more Denmark/Norway than his brother did. So unfortunately that doesn’t really rule much out for me. As for my mom’s side of the family, my mom passed away when I was pretty young, and that kinda severed most contact with that side of the family, so I can’t learn much from them. Luckily the mtDNA and my genealogy research makes that side pretty clear. Also, my dad recently did LivingDNA. When he uploads his raw data to GEDMatch and runs his ancient ancestry, I should have my answer.

[msmarjoribanks]

It should give you Global, Regional, and then Sub-Regions (if you click the plus again). Is what you showed above the sub-regions? It should give a breakdown of the English/Irish regions also.

My ancestry is predominantly English and British Isles more generally, but I definitely have more German than showed up, so I suspect it's in my SE English, although hopefully it will be revised at some point.

Oddly enough my Scandinavian is about right at 10.3% (one great-grandparent was fully Swedish, so that's reasonable enough), but I get only 1.4% German, and while my German is less certain and longer ago, I am sure it's more than that (although hard to say, since it was all 18th c immigration and who knows how much of it I inherited -- on paper it could be as much as another eighth, though).

On the YDNA, as JohnHowellsTyrfro said, you really would have to learn more about your specific subclade, which would likely involve more testing. Otherwise, I'd trust paper research more than estimates based on current location of U106 -- YDNA has basically nothing to do with autosomal. I'd also take Gedmatch with a grain of salt, although it's fun. The problem with Gedmatch is that different possible breakdowns can look the same. I've taken tests where I get 100% Frisian, and 50% N German/50% West German, and then also 75% Orkney/25% Austria, for example, and none of those are correct at all, but they all make some sense. So if you know your dad's family mainly came from Germany, I don't think there's any reason to question that based on results so far.

Just for interest, my Swedish line (my gg-grandfather who immigrated to the US) seems to be U106, although that's from my cousin-on-that-line's 23andMe, so I don't know anything more than what 23andMe gives.

[waltematec]

Yea. I hear ya. It’s frustrating that everything is so ambiguous.

I feel like it’s strange that my highest is U.K., but no one in the past 300 years on my family tree has been from the U.K. on either side. From what I read on the site, it says that the percentages for Autosomal don’t necessarily mean that is your ancestry, but it more so tells you how much you have in common genetically with the modern populations of those countries. If that is the case, then it would make sense that I have genetics most in common with people in the U.K., as they had been heavily invaded and populated by Germany, France, AND Scandinavia. So even though none of my ancestors I have found on my family tree have been from England, it seems reasonable that there would be very similar genetics there, either through the Anglo Saxon migration, Jutes, Normans, or Vikings. (Or all of them??)

I know that from the last few hundred years my ancestors immigrated from Germany and France almost exclusively (I found a Danish connection on my father’s side back a few generations and the Normandy connection on my mom’s side). I’ve even found ship manifests of some of my specific ancestors, which was kinda cool. But my Scandinavian is higher than both French and German on LivingDNA, and also seems to be the case when I cross reference it with GEDMatch. It’s not EXACTLY the same on both sites, as I wouldn’t expect it to be, but it gave me pretty much the same general story. This really makes me wonder how long my ancestors lived in the areas they immigrated from. How many generations, I mean. Maybe they only lived in Germany and France for a few hundred years?

I can’t find anything on my ancestors before about 1700AD through genealogy. But I guess everyone is from somewhere else at some point in history, even my ancestors from Germany/France. However, I also feel like if my ancestors were in Germany/France for several generations, the Germany/French would be more dominant than the Scandinavian.

When it comes down to it, the only information I really have outside of my genealogy research is the Autosomal, yDNA, and mtDNA readouts, so I guess a grain of salt is all I have to go on? Haha (at least until the technology is refined)

On the plus side, I definitely find it encouraging that specifically my mtDNA told me to expect to find Norway on my motherline, and when exploring that line through genealogy, it lead me to Normandy, an area with strong Norwegian history. So I feel like I’m on the right path and I can take it with SOME confidence that it’s at least somewhat accurate in certain instances. I am hoping to get more clarity out of my yDNA with out spending a large amount of money, but I guess I need to accept these tests for what they are and recognize the limitations.

[Onur Dincer]

The thread has been moved from the General section to the Living DNA section.