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I am sure I am not alone in having mysterious DNA matches at moderate distance for many people in Scandinavia. In my particular case, I've determined that it is likely to be the case that my ancestor from Scandinavia, or who had descendants who went to Scandinavia, lived in Northern Ireland or Scotland.
It is well known that several Swedish kings invited Scots to enter their service as mercenaries, and later also as tradespeople. Some Scots were granted lands and titles in Sweden and what is now Finland as well.
This project is about chasing down the Missing Link between Scandinavia and Scotland. I have a number of Scandinavian DNA matches who have extensive trees. I cannot in good faith extend those trees any further because I simply do not know the languages involved or the resources available. But I do have good reason to believe that there may be only one such link, at least in my case, because that is what the chromosomes tell us.
The attached chromosome overlap map has two notable points of interest: First, about 2/3 of the way along Chromosome 5, every Scandinavian match has a small overlapping section. This is also in common with all of my matches that come via old New England, so I believe it is what I call the "Mayflower Passenger snippet". It's distant - at least 11th cousin, possibly more. Second, on several other chromosomes, there's a more sizeable chunk of DNA. These do not overlap among the four Scandinavians but they are on the same chromosomes and thus they could well be due to a single common ancestor, guesstimated to be at about the 8th cousin level.
GENI won't allow me to include specific profiles of living people, but here are profile links for those Scandinavian matches I know who have extensive trees:
My profile is here:
Any pedigrees that might conceivably help would be very welcome. The focus is now on Ewings, and those who married into this clan, because that is what the DNA analysis has now concluded. See below.
Some resources:
(1) Searchable information about Scots leaving and returning up to 1707
The SSNE database comprises of information relating to c.8000 individuals from Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales who migrated to or worked in Denmark-Norway, Sweden (inc. Finland), and the Baltic countries between 1580 and 1707. They represent the military, naval, diplomatic, intellectual, mercantile and social elite from the British Isles who operated in northern Europe. The names included here are drawn from a variety of primary and secondary sources. Their entries are being constantly updated and added to as new information becomes available.
Previous studies have often failed to place the Scottish connection with the Scandinavian and Northern European countries into a satisfactory context. They have not allowed for an accurate estimation of the importance of the Scottish presence since we have previously not known whether it formed a small or a large percentage of those arriving from the British Isles. The SSNE database means that for the first time a reasonably accurate comparison of Scottish, English and Irish involvement with these locations is feasible. That comparison is all the more useful since the citizens of the three kingdoms were all subjects of the same monarch.
I personally find it interesting that this database includes a significant number of Wrights, since my Wright ancestors appear to have originated in Scotland and arrived in North America via Northern Ireland.
(2) Blog by a Scandinavian descendant of a Scot
This blog goes into particular individuals. It talks about Finland, though, and has relevance to one of the profiles mentioned above:
It's not a blood relationship - but it is really pretty close, so one wonders if there may not be an error in Anita's tree.
But the relationship is too far distant to be the one we are looking for anyway - some 11 generations - although it is instructive that there are similar kinds of relationships to the Scot mentioned among the other DNA Scandinavians:
- https://www.geni.com/path/Maj-Erik-Lilliebrunn-till-Monikkala+is+related+to+Gun-Christine-Fuller-Johansson?from=6000000012785505888&path_type=inlaw&to=6000000134400930821
- https://www.geni.com/path/Maj-Erik-Lilliebrunn-till-Monikkala+is+related+to+Mikael-Forsgren?from=6000000012785505888&path_type=inlaw&to=4046272301240128275
(3) Select Scots who went to Sweden, and what they did there
This summary provides short biographies of some of the Scots who went to Sweden between 1705 and 1725, wand what they did there.
(4) More short biographies of Scots from Church and Town record in Sweden
(5) Swedish church records, with some minimal English help
This site may overlap with the Ancestry Swedish church record collection, or not, but it is probably more up to date in any case. I have not yet tried to extend back in time the tree of any of my Swedish DNA matches using it, but that seems a worthwhile project. I know that the churches in Gothenburg logged weddings and baptisms of Scots, based on reading materials above, but I am unsure about any such activities outside of Gothenburg.
DNA match chromosome analysis
I recently had a significant break in the Scandinavian relationships case when I discovered that a close cousin whose history I know well had Northern Ireland ancestry that overlapped mine - in fact, overlapped another match of mine that was unquestionably a match related to my second-great-grandmother Rebecca Lithgow. So I knew that her Northern Ireland ancestor, Thomas L Brown , was also a Ewing, and that we were thus related in two ways. I could guess about how far back the common Ewing ancestor was too - I estimated 6th-7th cousin at that time.
It turns out that her first cousin, who is also related in exactly the same two ways, happens to have common DNA with me on a wholly different chromosome - chromosome 19. I know this must also be Ewing DNA because other index DNA matches I have that share everything else but this Northern Ireland ancestor do not have any overlap at all on Chromosome 19.
The match there is extensive - I estimated about 5th cousin. So I moved the common ancestor between myself and Thomas Brown one generation closer.
But then I noted something else: not just one, but TWO of my mysterious Scandinavian matches were completely contained by this cousin's overlap. Thus, at least for those two, I know about where they connect to my ancestry. What I still don't know is where this connects in on the Scandinavian side.
These are the common ancestors, one of which has a blood relationship with my two Scandinavian matches about three generations further up:
The two Scandinavian matches that must connect above them are:
A similar conclusion can be made for one more Scandinavian match: that for Anita Kallunki, a modern Finn. This overlap is on Chromosome 22, and the overlap is shared between her and an Australian Ewing descendant. The common ancestor in this case is the parents of John Ewing, whose names are unknown, based on overlap.
Finally, the last match: Private . The DNA overlap from this Finn is a piece of Chromosome 3, which was mysterious up until now. But the newly-found DNA from my second cousin descended from Thomas Brown does overlap that as well. So all four Scandinavians look like they are related through the Ewing branch!
The simplest interpretation is that there is one Ewing forebear that accounts for all of these Scandinavian matches, and that they share a common ancestor about 2-3 generations above the parents of John Ewing.
Completing/correcting the Scandinavian trees
The next logical step is to figure out, from the Scandinavian side, where the Scotsman is that is in common across all of these matches. I've been studying up on how to do Scandinavian trees. The Swedish family tables are written clearly, give exact birthdates, and places of birth (although those do not seem to be always accurate). The naming, on the other hand, is a combination of patrimonial and surnames as they are now currently used.
The reason that the exact birthdates are important is because without them, you have no hope of finding the right family for a person, since the patrimonial surnames depend only on the father's given name, and there is not a lot of variation there. Unfortunately, the family tables really began around the 1800s and before that there are only church records. The church records are hard to find, once again, because you need to use the father's given name, and that is often not even fully known. For example, an "Erik Ersson" was really the son of an "Anders", but apparently that "Anders" didn't use "Anders" in everyday life, but just "Ers".
What is more, I've found already several errors (I think) in the trees of my modern Scandinavian relatives, who also seem to have been thrown off balance by the patrimonial naming system. What allowed me to detect these errors were the accurate birthdates in the tables. The corrections to the trees were significant, and I only carried them through in one place that had not been fully completed in the first place, because of the disruption.
What this basically means is that it is very hard to trace Swedish families much before 1800. You can get the dates and birthplaces of the parents, but that's the end of the line. Or at least that is where my skill set currently ends. I figure I need to learn how to add at least 3 more generations before we can find a common ancestor.
The good news is that for at least one match, we have a link back to Gothenberg, at least:
- Jonas Lostierna, till Moisio (Gun Christine Fuller's ancestor)