Why do Irish people look so different from Scandinavians if they're so close genetically?

[Token]

It's weird with Ireland on those calculators, there are some people who are extremely drifted, and then some people who are very close to Scandinavians (more so than any English). End result is that the average is not that close by NW Euro standards.

It would be telling if these people who are very close to Scandinavians came mostly from eastern Ireland.

[Jana]

I don't know why I'm so much closer to Norwegians than the Irish average?

Distance to: Grace
2.07639110 Icelandic
3.67318663 Scottish
3.70654826 Irish_Connacht
3.82745346 Norwegian
3.84933761 Dutch_North
4.10109741 Irish
4.10454626 West_Scottish
4.11882265 Irish_Leinster
4.15441933 Orcadian
4.20343907 Irish_Munster
4.45470538 Denmark
4.51352412 Dutch_Central
4.66038625 Irish_Ulster
4.67193750 English_North
4.68362039 Norway_South_Central
5.03362692 Dutch
5.03711227 Sweden_Götaland
5.04918805 Welsh
5.46866529 English
5.50012727 German_Northwest
5.87728679 English_Midlands
5.93609299 North_German
6.00581385 English_Southeast
6.07132605 English_Southwest
6.61623004 Sweden_Svealand_West

Possibly different areas of Ireland have a closer distance. Even I'm further away than the Irish using K13 makes me wonder why there should be discrepancies like that? I'm above 4 distance to the Irish.

You seem to have huge chunk of Scandinavian like ancestry despite you're fully Irish. Maybe some Irish villages and micro-locations (hotspots) preserved more medieval Viking/Norse blood?
Since Ireland was fairly rural until recently, it's possible.

[Oliver109]

Adaptation to different northern climates made most of the difference as well as geographical location. Ireland is an island, therefore its population is also genetically less diverse than that of Scandinavia. Although both the Irish and Scandinavians are genetically less diverse than continental European populations as a whole especially Southern European ones. The different northern climates gave rise to phenotypes which combines fair skin + blond hair + blue or light eyes to be most common in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and a gloomier or cloudier climate gave rise to pale or freckled skin + red or brown hair + blue or light eyes in Ireland.

I don't think the Irish evolved their pale skin in the British isles, the pale skin is probably a more ancient adaption, many of the Uralic people posted on here have very pale skin and even sometimes resemble the Irish morphologically, pale skin is also often seen in French Alpines though seldom as fair as that of the Irish, the reason why the Irish are more widely pale is probably due to a genetic bottleneck along with being on an island effectively isolating them from other elements, many Scandinavians on the other hand are also very pale though they have far more diversity in skin tones than the Irish.

[Defcon2]

The Irish and Scandinavians are very similar genetically and yet they don't look similar at all, and I'm not only talking about facial features but also pigmentation. There was a study done here by a member (Xenophobic Prussian) on hair colour and he found Scandinavians to be THREE times blonder than Irish people. And in terms of facial features they also look very different, you would just never mistake for Irish someone like Dolph Lundgren for example. Why is it that they're so different in facial features and hair colour despite being so close genetically?

I couldn't honestly distinguish this Irish player from the Russians or Scandinavians.

[Creoda]

It would be telling if these people who are very close to Scandinavians came mostly from eastern Ireland.

In my experience they tend to come from the Central Belt - Leinster through to Connacht mostly. (South) Munster and Ulster are the most drifted from Germanics, especially counties like Donegal.

My father has one of the more Scandinavian shifted results I've seen (after collecting 181 results), and he's from right in the middle of Ireland, but technically Leinster, the Eastern province where the Norse had settlements.

[Grace O'Malley]

A relative of mine recently has done MyHeritage and what I found interesting was that they have a Finnish GC. Not sure how that happens as they are done on IBD.

They got this result

Irish, Scottish and Welsh 77.4%
Scandinavian 16.5%
Finnish 6.1%

Genetic Groups are

USA (New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago) and Australia
Ireland #2
UK and Ireland #12
UK and Ireland #8
Eastern Ireland and England
Finland (Northern Ostrobothnia and Lapland)

They have mostly ancestry from Leinster but a grandmother from Roscommon. The MyHeritage ancestry breakdown is not something that I would take heed of but having a Finnish Genetic Group is what I find interesting. Usually genetic groups will have some Irish connection but this one doesn't. Anyway I found that the most interesting.

[vbnetkhio]

But why do they cluster so close then? Any group that has separated even for 1,000 years and shorter don't cluster together. Drift happens quite quickly. Why isn't this evident in a European cluster map? Any group separated that long would form unique genetic clusters. Even look at the Basque?

depends on what kind of calculation you are looking at.
According to admixture or PCA, Basques cluster away from other Europeans because they have different whg/eef/steppe proportions. In the Irish and Scandinavians these proportions are similar to each other, so they cluster closely.

So this type of test is just slightly affected by drifts, or doesn't measure drifts at all.

To properly measure drift you need different methods, like the FST index.

check the FST distances on page 4 here:
https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalf...nd_Britain.pdf

distances to the population of Dublin:

DUB 0.000000
ABER ​0.000476 (Aberdeen, Scotland)
ENGL_S_SE 0.000674
CEU 0.000767 (white Americans from Utah)
SWED 0.002226
PORT 0.003969
BULG 0.004140


notice the big jump in distance between CEU and SWED.

[Jana]

^^^^Former user Hrvoje also got Finnish genetic group on Myheritage (northern Ostrobothinia). Really strange for a Croat/Slovenian person.

[Charlemagne7]

I couldn't honestly distinguish this Irish player from the Russians or Scandinavians.

I'm not saying there isn't overlap at all but rather that as a group they look very different.

[Defcon2]

I'm not saying there isn't overlap at all but rather that as a group they look very different.

Mostly they differ in hair pigmentation, the... Icelanders? they are more blond. Anyway, it is something chosen to force the difference between the two countries.