Monthly Archives: June 2022

Posts from Base Camp

The DNA Test – Travel through time

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Today’s post is a little different, but still very much in the spirit of travel.

Although I had been thinking about it for a while, I finally got around to requesting an “Ancestry DNA” test this spring. And the results have now arrived.

Getting caught by the waves at the same beach where my father played as a child (‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands)

On the surface, the expectation was simple. With one Swiss parent and one Dutch parent, one would expect the results to be 50% from each country. But I also heard some other distant echoes from the past.

My ancestors lived in Maassluis, the Netherlands, many centuries ago

Over time, family stories become almost accepted as fact. And one of my family stories was that we had some Spanish ancestry, due to the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands in the 16th century. With respect to the Swiss side of my family, I wondered if there might be some Italian influence, given the fairly close proximity of Italy to my ancestral place of origin. And I also wondered what other interesting connections may have been forgotten in the mists of time.

A church in Lenk (Switzerland) – I wonder what important family events took place here?

I was pretty excited when the results finally arrived. When I clicked on the link, I discovered something very interesting. Switzerland and the Netherlands each belong to the same two broader groups: “Germanic Europe” and “England and Northwestern Europe”. And I had almost complete (92%) ancestry in those two regions.

Lots of choices, high above Lenk and Adelboden (Switzerland)

I found the “England and Northwestern Europe” region interesting. Consisting mostly of England, Belgium, the southern Netherlands, Northeast France and Switzerland, I had never really considered that DNA from England would be connected to both of my countries of origin. This region even contributed more to me than the anticipated “Germanic Europe” region.

Mårten Trotzigs gränd – the narrowest street in Sweden (Stockholm)

And what about the other 8%? The stories and guesses were, in a word, wrong. No Italy. No Spain. As it turns out, most of my other ancestry was from Sweden/Denmark, with a smaller part from Norway. I had always been looking south, but it appears that I should have been looking north.

Terminus of the railway to Flam (Norway)

I know that these tests are not 100% accurate, and of course some ancestry is lost with each passing generation. But way back in 2012, I felt very comfortable in Stockholm (see photo at the very top of this post). I thought it was a place in which I could live. It makes you wonder why I had that feeling.