I was able to trace my lineage back on my father's side to Scottland 18th Century, but the furthest I could go back on my mother's side was an ancestor who lived in Pennsylvania in the 19th Century; I'm not sure where in Europe my mother's side came from. I turned in one of those DNA tests though and it came back 39% Ireland (Though this includes the regions of Ireland, Scottland, and Wales) and 30% Scandinavia which I did not expect. My parents told me that they believed my family came primarily from England and Germany but that's not how my DNA seems to match up.
Edited: Aericsteele on 7th Jul, 2016 - 9:21pm
Aeric,
Migration and Immigration. Wonderful features of the human species.
If you have Scandanavian ancestors, you could have some relations to the Vikings and the Norse who roamed the waters and controlled the Northern expanses of Europe long before British or even Roman rule.
Also the Gauls who predated the Romans were an exploring group of people and their heridtary influences can be seen in Germans, French, Belgians, and a good portion of Scandanavia and the Slovak Countries.
Remember as well that genetics does not recognize borders and countries as they are today. The European Baltic States were different in the 1800s as were they in the 1600s. Almost every century saw some sort of change in the human geography of those areas.
If you were able to find written history from your ancestors, you could shore up a lot of your concerns or questions..
I have been lucky in my experience having been obsessed with where my parent come from all the way back.
Although I live in a country that only established proper infra-structure about a century ago, both sides of the family has been very diligent in keeping records.
My mother and all her ancestors have been keeping track of all their kin since the larger family landed in the early 19th century. That means for almost two hundred years there has been detailed records and even a family book printed with pictures. This book is updated about every generation or so and then there is a big gathering.
My father on the other hand was born in the Netherlands. This was a bit more trickier but lucky those authorities keep MUCH better records. There I was able to have my lineage traced back to the 17th century. I do not have the comprehensive list, but I have the name and profession of every male predecessor all the way back sine they started with the records keeping. Their records are so updated that it even has my generation on there that was not born in the Netherlands.
My grandmother did geneology for our family. On my mom's side they go back to the Plantagenets in England, and there was an entire page of ancestors in the geneology book she made who had been beheaded at the Tower of London.
My dad's side is Portuguese, from the Azores, and the Portuguese are infamous for their lack of record keeping. It's been pretty impossible to trace it back past their immigration to America. To make things worse, one of my ancestors took his mother's maiden name when they got married.
This is something I always wanted to do but never really did. The part of Greece my father's side comes from really didn't track girl births, so that's half the chart erased and were notoriously lackadaisical even about boys. My moms side in Itsky could be different, but I just never had the time.