It is harder to decipher Northwest Europeans because they cluster so close to each other. English, Germans, Dutch and Swedes etc all overlap with one another, and that is why your results look so varied, from one company to the next. Maybe these companies should lump Northwest Europe into one category, and be done with it. I find Northwest Europeans complain about their results much more than other people.

Your matches are what really confirms your ethnicity. For example, you may be English, and score Scandinavian instead of English, but if you get lots of English matches, that proves you are English. You maybe German, and score English instead of German, but if you get lots of German matches, that proves you are German.

I am British and my family tree for 500 years is predominantly North Essex, Suffolk (the majority) and Norfolk. Luckily for me, my families hardly moved from their home towns/villages for hundreds of years which made my Genealogy research reasonably easy to pin down. It was supported by family folklore passed down by word of mouth.

As you probably know, these counties are in the English region called East Anglia (Land of the Eastern Angles) which is the big “bump” on the Eastern side of England. After the Roman empire collapsed around 450, this area saw an influx of people called “Angles” from the Southern part of the Jutland peninsular (just below modern day Denmark). The Angles homeland was South of the Jutes in Jutland and North of the Saxons. After they settled the Danes/Vikings arrived about 400 years later and following that the area was ruled by them (Danelaw) almost up to the Norman invasion.

The resulting DNA from these post Roman settlers would show very similar results to people in modern day Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland, which is where the DNA companies struggle as you rightly pointed out, Ron. Their samples are all pretty much based on where people live today rather than where they originated.

This is why my DNA has such wild heritage variations. I think Living DNA must overlay a bit of historical knowledge to modify the result, they are a UK company so that would make sense. I imagine this is how they can split the results between recent and longer term for the Y and Mitochondrial and be more regionally accurate.

Anyway, I suspect your result might indicate a reasonable Celtic content because of the multi-county result. The Celts were the people in England before the Romans invaded, they didn’t go anywhere but became what is known as Romano-British, living in the style of Romans. After the Romans left they returned to a similar way of life to before the Roman invasion, they lived side by side and mixed with Angles, Saxons, Vikings etc but weren’t displaced very much. As a result their DNA will still exist quite strongly all around England and won’t be particularly regional.

I imagine that I descend largely from the Settlers and you are more of a mix of Original Celtic British and post Roman Settlers.

Any way that’s my take on it all…… for the moment 🙂

Cheers
Nick