So, I consider myself to be of Norwegian-American descent and culture. I mean, my dad has raised me talking about not only Old Norse Viking stuff because he’s nerdy like that (affectionately) but Norwegian stuff as a whole and language videos on it. I am actively learning Norwegian on-and-off.
I understand having a lot of Swedish when I take a look at my DNA due to my dad saying that Scandinavians impregnated everywhere. I understand that I had some distant relatives from London and apparently a lot of English people have at least 25% Scandinavian DNA, but IDK if it’s true and I don’t consider myself English. It’s not my culture, really, nor is being English-American or anything.
However, I get some Spanish that pops up (like from Spain) and I have no idea where it comes from or how/if it relates to being Scandinavian.
Depending on how long your family was in the US, it could have been a Spanish ancestor here. There was a lot of undesirable ancestry that was deliberately forgotten by families, until genetic testing revealed it.
It also could have happened in Europe. People did move around in the past, just not as much.
There’s a common story in Norway of Spanish sailors surviving wrecks of the 1588 Armada against England, as it retreated to the North Sea and rounded Scotland, subsequently marrying into the Norwegian population. Norwegians will tell you this is a bunch of bullshit, like white Americans claiming an Indian princess as an ancestor. But my Norwegian-born grandfather did have genetically-proven Spanish ancestry, and claimed to have found genealogical records in Norway that proved that story.
Funnily enough, I also have genetically-proven indigenous American ancestry from the American side of my family. Couldn’t say it was an Indian princess, though. Any records are lost. The family myth was 100% Northwestern European until the tests came back.