I’m A Viking With Many Neanderthal Traits

Discovering where I came from, who my distant relatives are and what I might die from were not high on my bucket list.

It was already very apparent to me that I was of Norwegian heritage, having grown up with lutefisk, lefse and kringla every Christmas. My dad spoke enough Norse to make me wonder what he was hiding from the rest of us when he conversed with other relatives who could speak it. The way they would laugh, I figured he was just swearing, something he would never do in English in front of kids.

Anyhow, I decided to buy the 23&Me Health and Ancestry Service for $199 (of course it just went on sale for $99). The saliva sample I was asked to provide required multiple efforts to fill the collection tube. This sample would reveal where I came from and all sorts of things relating to my health, traits, and by extension, longevity.

It takes time to understand the reports, which contain terms I have heard of but now take on more significance since they help explain how I am assembled. This includes terms such as genome, chromosomes, mitochondria, haplogroups, mutations and more.

Presumably we all want to know this information so we can better anticipate what is to come based on those who created our genetic paths. It also provides us with a list of diseases we are susceptible to so we can have something to brag about.

This health information can also be useful for family planning, maybe more of a warning. But it won’t tell you if one child might develop into a stable genius while another might end up as a pathological narcissist. This all has no bearing on my immediate family because my two kids were adopted – from India and South Korea. There is no DNA test to see how well we raised them.

My mother always said there was a German in our family mix going back a ways and that’s why I’m not 100 percent Scandinavian. She was partially correct. I’m 86.6 percent Scandinavian (Norwegian) and 5.2 percent French-German (Rhine area in Germany). The rest is British/Irish, Finnish, and broadly Northwestern European.

Apparently we only share about 50 percent of our DNA with our siblings. I certainly hope it’s the healthy half. Diabetes is common in my family history and my DNA test highlighted that, based on other relatives with close matches to mine. I’m also susceptible to late stage Alzheimer’s Disease, although I don’t remember any in the family who had it. Maybe that’s the first sign.

I’m not really much of a Neanderthal – less than four percent of my overall DNA. But I have more of their traits than 88 percent of those who have been tested by 23&Me. This apparently means I may have some Neanderthal variants in my DNA like having less back hair. Really? I thought they would have more. I don’t think I’m the missing link, but I do have some back hair. 

There are other more general non-Neanderthal traits listed. For example, I’m not likely to have flat feet (my dad did), I have average odds of hating chewing sounds (I do hate it), I get bitten by mosquitoes about the same as most others, I have a slight dislike for cilantro (maybe I should taste some to find out), and I’m more likely to be able to smell asparagus in urine. It’s interesting information but I don’t think it makes me very unique.

The results I got include a predicted family tree that shows how I’m connected to relatives who had their DNA tested. It would be interesting to have the DNA test results of my ancestry going back many generations, but it’s a little difficult getting a saliva sample from people buried six feet under. Even a hair sample would not be acceptable for this test.

You may not want to find out anyhow to avoid the embarrassment of learning that your parents were actually related to each other. In my case, we already know that to be true. Luckily, it goes back quite a ways. There probably weren’t a lot of marriage options in rural Norway back then.

I have 1,189 relatives that took this test. While that’s impressive, the list quickly goes from close relatives (brother, nephew, first cousin) to second, third, fourth, fifth and “distant” cousin. My second cousins only share about 1-4 percent of my DNA.

I have third cousins that share less than one percent. And then there are cousins that are “once removed.” They’re like twigs on distant branches. Fuhgeddaboudit. Relationship charts that explain all this are readily available on the internet.

I already have been contacted by four relatives, including Ulf Stridh, a fifth cousin who shares a fourth great grandparent with me (0.18 percent DNA). Maybe he’ll let me stay at his place if I visit New York.

My mother’s line (haplogroup) traces back to a woman who lived in Europe at the end of the ice age 10,000 years ago. In addition, the excavated remains of a 10^th century grave revealed that the person was a high-ranking Viking warrior whose DNA matched that same haplogroup. And that warrior was a woman.

Lots more to learn. But I now know that I can blame all my shortcomings on my Neanderthal mutations, I’m at least 50 percent different from my brothers (even though everyone says we look and sound the same) and my adopted kids can’t blame me for giving them bad genes.

And I’m a Viking! Thanks, Mom.