A few years ago, I wrote a poem about wanting to be "more naked." I achieved that, to some extent, by writing a series of autobiographical posts entitled Journal of a Naked Poet (published 20 January 2020 - 4 October 2020). I further extended it in the past year, by publishing a "kink" list. Now, it is true that je suis un peu exhib, but the truth is that I am aiming for total transparency--I want to have no secrets. With that in mind, I now offer a rundown of my genealogy and DNA matches (often called "DNA cousins").
My ethnicity estimate (per MyHeritage):
Scandinavian 57.7% (There is no way that Scandinavian should be this high, but this is based on the mutations that showed up in my DNA sample.) Only one of my four grandparents was Scandinavian.
Irish, Scots, Welsh 19.8%
East European 7.8%
Finnish 3.2%
West Asian 1.4%
I have 18,544 total DNA matches on MyHeritage. Bearing that in mind:
I have 580 DNA matches with the Gävleborg subgroup within Sweden (in my case, centered on the city of Bollnäs, traditionally rich in Finns and Jews).
I have 1,597 matches with the Eastern European ethnicity.
I have 188 matches with the Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity.
I have 33 matches with the Sephardic Jewish ethnicity.
I have 9 matches with the Mizrahi Jewish/Iranian/Iraqi ethnicity.
I have 1 Yemenite Jewish match (which happens to be 1/2 Finnish).
I have 79 "West Asian" matches.
I have 5,734 DNA matches for the Finnish ethnicity. Interestingly, this is 31% of the total, far more than the 3.2% listed on my ethnicity estimate. Some of the Finnish must be hidden in "Scandinavian." There was, after all, a lot of intermarriage.
The distribution of these DNA matches is quite interesting:
The numbers of matches for the leading locations can be seen in the sidebar.
My sister Kathy (the genealogist in the family) and I had been wondering where all the Finnish DNA matches were coming from. Now we know. Our great-grandfather, Peter Frederick Jacobson, whom we always assumed was Swedish, was actually Finnish. We found this to be a pleasant surprise, and one that added immensely to our ancestral diversity. At PFJ's birth, his family had already been in the Ljusnarsberg (previously known as "Lindesås finnmark") area for at least five generations. They were "Mountain Finns," and miners.
So that's the DNA story. With regard to the genealogy proper, there is a strange thing: although I come from very working-class people, I am a direct descendent of ancient kings of Ireland, the nobility of Wales, Cornwall, and England, and several of the kings of England, including Richard III. Thirty-two generations back, we are directly descended from Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland. Several generations of my ancestors inhabited Picton Castle, in Pembrokeshire, west Wales. (See the illustration below.) All of this descent from nobility and royalty came through my father's grandmother, Hannah Elizabeth Moore 1850-1936, a simple farm woman of Welsh parentage. Also interesting, though not cases of direct descent: John Dryden and Jonathan Swift were among our cousins.
So what happened to the Native American? It is no longer listed separately, because MyHeritage and other DNA companies have trouble differentiating NA from Finnish, with which it is now lumped together in these statistics. I found this surprising, and would hope that they would improve their precision in the future. In the meantime, I shall continue to write in Udugi along with my other languages.
Donald Jacobson Traxler
Text Copyright © 2021 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.
