i don't really have much faith in Ancestry ethnicity estimates, because that's all they are - estimates based on a reference panel of some 3000 people. These people are determined to live in the same place as their ancestors over many generations. Nothing to do with DNA matches or information in trees on-line.
I can trace my Dad's ancestors back to Somerset, Sussex, Hampshire/Berkshire, Surrey, Warwickshire/Shropshire and Norfolk. Nothing north of the Midlands, so I don't know where they get an estimate of 17% Scottish - perhaps a proportion of people who are part of the Scottish reference panel have DNA that originated further south ?
I can understand his small percentages of Wales (6%) via his Shropshire ancestors and the 4% Norwegian and 4% Swedish maybe from his Norfolk and Sussex lines.
Mum has an estimate of 39% Scottish, and some Germanic Europe which I cannot fathom. She has only one great-grandparent from Scotland and one from Ireland, so I would have thought that her Irish and Scottish percentages were about the same. The rest were from Manchester(3) Cambridgeshire (2) and Warwickshire/Bedfordshire (1). For someone with great grandparents from Cambridgshire, I would have expected at least a trace of Norwegian/Swedish.
Their 2 grand-daughters also have Ancestry DNA samples (but I dont) and again, their Scottish ancestry is particularly high (42% for one and 39% for the other). Their Irish is low at 2% and 5%. As I know their ancestry back at least 6 generations, I would have estimated the amounts of Irish and Scottish should be about the even, and more than the 10 and 6 % Welsh.
I think Ancestry has changed the reference panel, but I do know that their earlier estimates were more in line with my thinking coming via my research and knowledge of their family tree.
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