23 and WHO?

We are living in a time of scientific wonders.  Advancements our forefathers couldn’t dream of are commonplace.  Taken for granted, even.  Computers that respond to our voice, a device that pumps a gas into your wine bottle so you don’t have to uncork it to drink it, the Silpat baking sheet.  But the newest craze of the modern age is the one that takes us back in time.  I’m talking about the DNA home test kit.  And nobody appreciates a future filled with exploring the past more than I do.

Dutta, Me, My Mom, and Ma

As a young child I used to spend weekends at my maternal grandmother's house, where she lived with her mother, my great-grandmother.  I never knew my maternal grandfather.  He had died shortly before I was born.  I suppose his absence from the household may have been a factor in my overwhelming identification with all things Norwegian.  You see, my grandmother was born in Norway.  And her mother, as one can rightly infer from her having been present at the birth, also called Norway home.  And I’m not talking Oslo.  No big city, cosmopolitan, cultural melting pot in my background.  No, my grandparents migrated to America from a small island called Grindøya, which is situated in the middle of a fjord, which is located in Tromsø, which is inside the Arctic Circle.  One Arctic Circle and two 'o's with a slash through them.  That’s how Norwegian they were!

Norwegian Beth

Thanks to my grandmother, I grew up eating something called lefse (a kind of Norwegian flatbread), with gjetost (a kind of Norwegian cheese).  Every Christmas we put out the julenissen dolls (Norwegian elves) and made fattigmann (a traditional Norwegian cookie.)  One Halloween my costume was actually “Norwegian Girl.” A platter on my grandmother’s kitchen wall beckoned visitors to “be so good as to drink and eat,” in Norwegian.  And although I never learned the language – beyond being able to say “be so good as to drink and eat,” that is – I heard plenty of it because when Ma and Dutta (our nicknames for them) didn’t want me to understand what they were saying, they would say it in Norwegian.  Having arrived in the United States at the age of eight, Ma spoke English perfectly, without the slightest trace of an accent.  Meanwhile, Dutta spoke in broken English and struggled her whole life to be able to pronounce the letter ‘J’.  She was never successful.

I am told my maternal grandfather came from Ohio.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that my sense of self is deeply anchored in my Norwegian heritage.  My connection to that country is a source of pride for me.  For chrissake, I named my first daughter Freya, after the Norse god.  I bought her the Norwegian Barbie doll when it came out.  (Yes, I bought it for her… the one I bought for myself is still MIB.)  I even own my own fattigmann cutter!

So this Christmas, when my husband bought a DNA kit for each member of our family, I was eager to jump on the bandwagon.  As we all gathered around a table in a corner of our local Starbucks and discreetly spit into our respective tiny glass tubes, I was already growing impatient for the results.  Soon, I would have scientific evidence that the blood of Vikings coursed through my veins…

Raise your hand if you know where this is going.

But first, a word about my husband’s results.

My teutonic husband at "16 going on 17."

My husband’s ancestors, as far as we knew, were German.  He can make a pretty good case in support of this by mentioning any number of castles in Germany that bear the surname Falkenstein.  Also, just by showing his face.  When he was younger, if he had walked into a casting session for a production of The Sound of Music, all other aspiring Rolf Grubers would have known to throw in the towel – even before hearing him sing.  In fact, the only hesitation the family had in claiming 100% Western European heritage was due to the fact that one grandparent was the product of… an adoption. (What did you think I was going to say?)

So how is it, I ask you, that when our DNA results finally came back, not only was it determined that my husband was more than twice as Scandinavian as I was (18% to my 6%), but so were both of my daughters?  I confess, I felt a little dizzy at the revelation.  I felt a little like that Polaroid picture Marty McFly keeps consulting in Back to the Future.  I was disappearing, becoming see-through.  If I wasn’t mostly Norwegian, did I even exist anymore?  And don’t talk to me about Polaroid pictures not having feelings.  The imagery is apt!

Apparently, my experience is not unique as evidenced by the very detailed explanation of this conundrom that AncestryDNA.com felt was necessary to include in their FAQ section.  Put in easy-to-understand non-technical terms for the science-challenged-over-hyphenated-weekend-geneologist: our genes are like beads on a necklace, with each parent randomly passing on half of their beads to their children.  In other words, I inherited my maternal grandfather’s jewelry.  (By the way, I believe they make lovely jewelry in Ohio.)

It’s a little less simple to understand how my children scored higher than me on the “So You Think You’re Norwegian” scale.  It’s not like I could chalk it up to my husband cheating on me.  Turning back to the jewelry metaphor, I guess I gave them my only pair of Nordic stud earrings, which my “German” husband promptly augmented with a matching choker, bracelet, ring and brooch.

Okay, whatever, I’m not bitter.  I mean, I get that my cultural heritage can be different from my biological heritage.  And I’ve made peace with what this means for me.  My identity is what I say it is, and I identify as Norwegian.  My pronouns are hun, henne and hennes.  It’s not like people I meet are going to say, “Bullshit, you’re 48% European Jew.  It’s written all over your blood.”  (Note to Mattel: Consider releasing a European Jew Barbie.)  Besides, just because some of my ancestors were Russian, or Polish, or English, or Welsh doesn’t mean some weren’t fucking Vikings…

… It just means they didn’t fuck enough Vikings.