I'm quite fond of Russian art.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Asklemmy
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this is not something people outside the us reflect on. it's a common trope that us-americans go to europe to find their roots and whatever and nobody understands what they even mean by that.
Oh, understandable
Nationalism—the idea that there ought to be (or ever was) a 1:1 correspondence between countries, cultures, and ancestry—is a 19th-century invention unsupported by history, anthropology, or genetics. Ancestry tests that categorize results by country are obfuscating real data to meet a demand for pop pseudoscience.
Culture and identity has little to do with ancestry or actual ethnicity. It’s strongly correlated but ultimately we are what we were raised to be.
Thank you. A lot of people (not on Lemmy) have just made fun of me for identifying as American with Norwegian roots. It's not like I said I was more Norwegian than Norwegians born in Norway though or said I was just American and couldn't be Norwegian-American
the thing is, how does this norwegian background actually affect your day to day life? do you speak norwegian? do you follow norwegian politics? do you eat norwegian dishes? decorate your home like a norwegian (whatever that might be)?
cos like, tons of people in europe have ancestry from other european countries but pretty much nobody keeps track of it. eg, a hungarian with of slovak or german ancestry (there are literally millions of them) would not consider themselves to be a slovak or a german at all. not even a hungarian-slovak or whatever.
this is generally why europeans are puzzled by the white hyphenated americans.
If someone asks what ancestry or culture, I might say Norwegian-American to an American, but I don’t consider myself a true Norwegian Norwegian so I would just say American unless that happens
Ohhhhh, I understand now. That makes sense
I am an American however, through and through and have my own distinct culture from a Norwegian-raised person
Happy cake day!!
It does come off as insecure when someone makes a culture they have little connection to a large part of their identity rather than just showing an interest in it, but most of the time it’s harmless and not worth making a big deal over. I would loosely define being part of a culture as fitting in with other members of it: ability to express yourself in the native language and understanding its nuances, familiarity with customs and mentality, not feeling out of place when around natives/locals regardless of your ethnicity or ancestry.
yes, I'm not born in Poland and I didn't grow up speaking Polish though I'm learning it on-and-off, but I grew up with people proud of their Polish heritage and always ready to learn more about their heritage country so I consider myself to be Polish. I'm like 16% Spanish and mostly English :]
Reminds me of this weirdo dude in college who had family issues and clung to every single random ethnicity from his test. Starting wearing Native American jewelry and such.
Makes sense
Reincarnation can be significant.
Oh, & genetic-testing is notoriously inaccurate, unless one is paying-for 1000x oversampling..
100x oversampling is the bare-minimum I'd consider useful.
The reincarnation thing: my "home" is what my soul/continuum remembers as "home" from some life as a buddhist Himalayan monk, many centuries ago.
To say that I don't fit this modern world well is understatement.
Wrong values, wrong instincts, wrong frame-of-reference, wrong reactions, wrong everything.
Once I undertood it, then .. life made MUCH more sense.
My unconscious has been trying to make my world fit its memory of my ( previous-incarnation's ) world, & that's impossible.
Once that became understood, then adapting & outgrowing-the-problem could begin.
_ /\ _
That makes sense. I believe I was Brazilian and Norwegian in a past life