Have you ever had the overwhelming need to know where you are from?
No me neither, until I found out you can take a quick Ancestry DNA test and find out within a couple of months. It’s literally so easy now to find out, why the hell not?
I got my AncestryDNA kit for Christmas (this is not a sponsored post!) and sent off my sample at the beginning of January. The results take 6 – 8 weeks to come in as obviously, they have to analyse your DNA.
The wait was so agonising for me, I’m so impatient.
A couple of weeks ago my results came through and today I’m going to reveal all. I was so surprised by my results but literally ecstatic.
How do you take the Ancestry DNA test?
First off let me tell you how it works.
1. You order your kit online and they send you a DNA collection pack in the post, really quickly.
2. Once you have your kit make sure to go online and activate it so that particular kit is registered to you, otherwise they won’t know who to send the results to 😀
3. Next up you have to fill the tube with saliva up to the wavy line. There will be lots of bubbles but you need actual saliva up the line. You will definitely feel like a bit of a wally dribbling into a tube for about 5 minutes. Just make sure no one is watching.
4. Take off the funnel and pop on the lid, then shake it up to mix the solution in the lid with your saliva.
5. Into the sample bag it goes, seal it up and pop it into the prepaid postage box.
6. Drop your little parcel of human sample into any post box you see and feel sorry for the postman.
Easy peasy. Now the hard bit, waiting.
How do the Ancestry DNA tests work?
So the sciency bit. The AncestryDNA test uses microarray-based autosomal DNA testing. This surveys your entire genome at over 700,000 locations, all from that simple saliva sample you just did.
Unlike other DNA tests which either test just paternal or maternal lineage the Ancestry DNA test looks at both sides.
The results will include your genetic ethnicity estimates and also identifies potential DNA matches, linking you to others who have already taken the AncestryDNA test.
My results took about 6 weeks. I got an email at about 6am with a link to my results. Instantly getting ready for work was forgotten as this was far more important 😀
My Ancestry DNA results
Ok so the bit you have been waiting for. Or was this just me! My results!
Look at that nifty little image you can download from the Ancestry website and share to social media. I’ve had to keep mine under wraps all this time.
So this is me:
- British: English – 40%
- British: Other (Scotland, Wales, Ireland) – 12%
- Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Denmark) – 28%
- Europe West (Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein) – 10%
- Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal) – 9%
- Europe South (Italy, Greece) – 1%
Ok so, 52% British is not really a surprise to me.
What surprised me was the 28% Scandinavian. I’m like nearly a third Viking guys!
Ok so I exaggerate slightly!
I was literally over the moon about this. I plan to incorporate trips to Scandinavia into our travel plans in the near future with the excuse that its partly my homeland so we must go 😀
I do have a particular fascination with that part of the world and now it just sort of makes sense to me.
The rest of me is just a mish mash of western Europe which is a ok. I’m 100% European!
Just goes to show my ancestors didn’t venture too far from home. That’s something I’m definitely going to change with my future travels.
If you want to take your own test you can order one from the Ancestry website here.
Or grab yourself a 14 day FREE trial with access to all of the Ancestry records.
Hi Jenna, nice post.
I have already took a DNA test with ADNTRO and now I am really more interested in all this DNA world!
I would like to take some other test to compare my results and probably I would take AncestryDNA after reading your post 🙂