My mtDNA says I'm a Viking.
My female line is Haplogroup I, found in Iron-Age Danish graveyards and medieval Viking burial grounds in Denmark and Scandinavia. I blogged about genealogical DNA tests, but never took the plunge until now.
Where do I come from? Who are my people? These are universal, perennial questions for memoir writers. Today, we ask: Where do I come from genetically? Who are my people genetically? We can differentiate male and female lines.
My imagination runs with this.
Through my father, I know a lot about my male line, the Jewetts. The earliest American Jewetts are two Puritain brothers from England, Deacon Maximilian Jewett and Joseph Jewett, whom I'll blog about some other time. I'm grateful for all the information provided by my family, as well as by The Jewett Family of America, History and Genealogy of the Jewetts of America, Civil War historians Vicki Profitt, David Welch, and Clay Feeter, and many other sources.
Before England, where did Jewetts come from? Normandy, France? Perhaps a village called Jouette, Fresney-le-Puceux? Did Jewetts go to England with the Norman Invasion in 1066? The surname Jewett (various spellings) supposedly starts showing up in England after the Normans took over. (The Normans used last names. The Anglo-Saxons didn't.) Other people hypothesize that the Jewetts were Jutes from Jutland (modern-day Denmark). Jutes conquered and settled eastern areas in England 200 years before the Norman Invasion, and earlier. Did the Vikings call themselves Jutes? (Jewetts?) Did Anglo-Saxons call them that? Did the name stick when surnames became part of the English scene? Who knows?
You know where I'm going with this, don't you?
Were the Jewetts Vikings? If they were, did they know my Viking females? Did they trek together in a Viking pack? Were they part of some sort of deep-ancestor tribe?
I love the image. It makes me want to sit around a campfire and I hate camping.
Still, it's a maybe.
At least I know why I like the Minnesota Vikings.
Tags: Clay Feeter, David Welch, Edward Jewett, genealogical DNA, Jewett Family of America, Maximillian Jewett, mtDNA, Vicki Profitt, Vikings
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