A couple months ago I had the opportunity to send my DNA into GPS Origins to have them test it. I've always wanted to do this, so naturally I jumped at the opportunity.
They sent me a kit and all I had to do what take some cheek swabs with the large Q-tips they sent and mail it back and wait patiently for a few weeks!
Here's a little science lesson for those of us who don't get how this whole gene mapping works.
So what I learned was my family is from Sweden (which I obviously already knew given my dad was born and raised there, but what I didn't know was that my ancestors actually traveled to Iceland and settled Iceland. My dad always joked we were Vikings, but turned out my ancestors actually were Vikings. Crazy huh? My ancestors also settled the Orkney Islands ( islands off the coast of Scotland settled by Scandinavian vikings) about 6000 years ago! So amazing to have that knowledge!
When we moved to the US from Sweden, my first big school project was to research and dress up as Leif Ericsson (funny side note, there were only two girls on the list to chose from, and I got to choose first because I had literally Just moved here, and I thought I was picking one of the girl names, because from where I sat, and my terrible eyes I thought it said Leah...so yeah I thought I was picking one of the girl names to dress up as, and the whole class assumed I picked the viking because I had just moved from Sweden.) I have a picture somewhere of me dressed in fur, with aluminum horns coming out of a helmet as a viking. Turns out that picture isn't that far of a stretch!
I've always known I'm Swedish on my dads side and Italian and Swedish from my moms side. But I also found out that my ancestors were from Sardinia, Greece, Albania, and The Balkans! I want to go got all of these places so badly, and walk the same places my ancestors did thousands of years ago. Wouldn't that be amazing?
I want to figure out some way to get all this information up on a little map for the kids so they can see where part of their DNA comes from, now we just need to do Drew's so they can have both sides!
