We Are All Vikings!

From Tara:

I sent off a small test tube of saliva to Ancestry.com's DNA testing center last week, and I am anxiously awaiting my results.  I have been playing around in the blogosphere since, trying to figure out just what sort of information might be provided when that "we're done" email finally arrives.  One thing that's immediately apparent from blogs on the subject is that many participants in the Beta of this DNA project are being told that they are Scandinavian.  Very Scandinavian.  Much more Scandinavian than their known family trees would suggest.

So of course this makes me wonder...what's up?  Is some proud Norwegian in Ancestry.com's labs tinkering with the data?  Or are we all actually Scandinavian?  The blog Your Genetic Genealogist attempts an explanation...and yes, it involves Viking invasions.  Lots of them.  The Genealogue tackles the problem of a missing French grandfather, discusses this Scandinavian problem, and suggests that Grandma might have been fooling around (I promise, it happened in your tree too..."non-paternity events" appear in every tree if you go back far enough).

I don't know of any members of my documented family tree from the Scandinavian countries.  I should be 1/4 Dutch, about 1/2 British, and about 1/4 Irish.  We had a Huguenot or two, so there could be a bit of French too.  I'll report back once I figure out if instead I am 100% Viking!