I consider myself to be Scandinavian first and foremost, I just like the word Viking better. My great-grandparents came to the U.S. from Denmark and Norway respectively. When my parents got married, they moved from Wisconsin to Southern California and converted from I can’t remember which church to the Catholic church, and that’s how my 3 sisters and I were raised.
I’ve come to realize that even as a kid, I never believed in any god/gods, it’s all a fucking lie.
In other words, you’re not Scandinavian. And nobody(*) in Scandinavia goes around claiming they are vikings. You are three generations removed from the remains of your great-grandparents’ scandinavian culture. Your DNA is irrelevant for whether you’re Scandinavian or not. Your citizenship and where and how you live is what counts. So unless you hold a Danish, Swedish or Norwegian passport, you’re American of the U.S. kind.
(*) Of course you might find the occasional oddball that self-identifies as “viking”, but they are weird outliers. What you can find relatively easily is people that are sufficiently interested in and fascinated by late iron age/viking/Nordic medieval culture and technology, and perhaps go as far as live roleplaying it. But they don’t self-identify as vikings.
It must be a North American thing. In Canada, many of us do the same thing but we’ll use the word heritage or culture or my family came from…it’s like remembering our original country of origins before coming here.
My dad’s side is “Ukrainian” and my mom’s “German”. I’m half/half. Lol
Last night a statue of Ryerson was toppled. Ryerson was one of the chief architects of Ontario’s native schools. He once stated …
“Agriculture being the chief interest, and probably the most suitable employment of the civilized Indians, I think the great object of industrial schools should be to fit the pupils for becoming working farmers and agricultural labourers, fortified of course by Christian principles, feelings and habits.”
Is that because 'Scandinavian ’ indicates a member of a specific set of countries rather than say an identifiable ‘racial’ sub group such as Anglo or Celt?
I think of myself as Irish Celt by blood because both parents and both sets of grand parents and great grandparents were Irish, and back further still as far as I know…
OR do you reject such divisions within human beings? To be pedantic, the division of human beings into broad ‘racial’ categories is an academic convention for convenience.
Imo when many people speak about ‘race’ , they actually mean species. As far as I’m aware, there is no universally accepted definition of ‘race’. That in fact there is only one race ; the human race.
I also think that familial and patriotic pride fall under the general heading of ‘granfalloon’ . On what rational grounds should I take pride in what are simply accidents of birth?
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Trivia: The coat of arms of my father’s family features a black man chained to an oak tree. I think that might be a hint about the basis of any family wealth. 
A combination of several reasons.
It can admittedly be quite interesting for genealogical and family history reasons to figure out where your ancestors came from. However, claiming a set of national identities for oneself when that ancestry is several generations back, mixed in with other ancestry for several generations, AND you yourself is born and raised on another continent in another culture I find quite dubious. For example, in my family, there are kids that have one non-european parent of mixed “racial”(*) descent (let’s call it X). However, they both look like and are raised like other kids would be around here, plus they are served extra cultural tidbits from this parent. Awareness of where this parent comes from and getting to know his/her relatives is a good thing, but for the kids therefore claiming being X is quite dubious. As for myself, there is some mixing in from individuals from Germany and from Sweden several generations back, but for me claiming that I’m therefore somehow German or Swedish is plain ridiculous, both “blood-wise”(**) (for lack of a better word) and culturally. Genalogical interest is a different matter entirely.
Then you have in-groups vs. out-groups. These can be, but are not required to be, related to genetic similarities, family closeness or cultural similarities; anything that bonds people together goes. If you move far away to a new place, with very limited communication to your family and friends that you leave behind, you will in practice get a new in-group that you relate to and, perhaps, identify with (actually hopefully, as it would not be a good life with no in-group to identify with). Claiming to belong to the in-group that (some of) your great-grandparents – or even further away – is highly dubious, as belonging to a group goes both ways – the individual has to identify with the group, and the other members have to somehow identify with you.
And then you have the social and cultural stuff. If you’re born and raised on another continent, you are raised in and conditioned to the cultural and societal context of your local and larger community(***). Even if you are adopted from far away (call it X), you will normally be raised in and conditioned with the local culture and customs (let’s call it ξ). Thus, for all practical intents and purposes, you will be ξ, and X is something that will only matter later in life, if you for genealogical purposes want to know more about your biological family. Adopted kids (especially if they have significantly different genetic characteristics so that it is obvious that the kids are not biologically related to their adoptive parents) are admittedly special cases where the desire and drive for the pursuit of actual biological ancestry can be stronger than for non-adopted kids. But in the big picture, this is not really relevant here.
And lastly, there is the question of citizenship. To claim you’re being Scandinavian (Swedish/Danish/Norwegian), or Italian, or French, or whatever, implies actually having a citizenship (and can thus hold a passport) of said countries. If you say you are French, this implies that you are a citizen of the republic of France. If you don’t, then you are NOT French. However, this does not preclude you from living in France, have a French s.o., or having ancestors coming from France, or being fascinated with French culture and history. But without a citizenship, you are decidedly NOT French.
HOWEVER, doing as you do, @boomer47, specifying that you are of a particular descent and being aware of and interested in where your ancestors came from, is unproblematic. So if @mr.macabre had specified that there is some Scandinavian ancestry in his family, and stuck to that, it would be unproblematic. But he claims BEING Scandinavian (and I an highly dubious there, for all the above reasons) and even “viking” (which is just plain ridiculous).
Oh, and a later addition: There is also the purely semantic aspect here. Whenever I hear someone say that they “are X” or “come from X”, then I immediately associate this with either this person physically coming from place X (not his/her ancestors) or actually holding citizenship in country X.
This is by now getting too long, so I think I’ll stop there.
(*) Science agrees there is only one race of homo sapiens; individuals from all parts of the world can intermix and produce viable offspring. Thus, any genetic difference is due local variation mainly because of historical limits on mass communication, regional sexual preferences, and perhaps also xenophobia.
(**) The notion of being of descent Y “by blood” sounds strange to me. It’s not the blood that transmits the genes, but the gametes. Being X or Y “by blood” is a language construct that stems from olden days from before anyone had even thought about genetics and what actually happens with animal (h. sapiens included) reproduction, and from when blood was attributed more or less magical properties and from the observation that if you let too much blood out, life ceases to exist in the individual. The significance of blood is therefore a symbolical proxy of descent rather than actual.
(***) You can always argue that there are exceptions, like closed sects and closed communities where there is little or no cultural or genetical interchange with the larger society; Hasidic Jews are a good example. But for the context of this post, they are irrelevant. ← Actually, strike that. On closer thought, I think Hasidic Jews are interesting examples of special cases that I think underline what I’m trying to convey. They are closed societies that do not interact easily with the larger community, and they are keeping language and cultural traditions and identities alive, so one can argue that they actually have a different identity than the rest of the surrounding society. Most other sects do not even come close to the Hasidic Jews in preserving the culture and language of their ancestors in another country, so THEY (the other sects) are more or less irrelevant.
You nailed some of it. When I was a toddler we’d visit my great-grandparents who spoke Ukrainian. They came over to Canada. My dad spoke Ukrainian as well, BUT refused to teach me (same with the dancing). He had much of the past old-country die with him. The area he grew up in Alberta is a Ukrainian cultural area.
Me??? I can make awesome Ukrainian food -BUT so can anybody. The boys don’t like the food, but I make it for myself once a year, freeze some.
Mmmmm, yummy, borscht and varenyky… Just like kim-chi soup and mandu. I had mandu for dinner. Holubtsi… those little rice stuffed cabbage rolls. Yummy… Okay, so mine are seasoned with red pepper, topped with soy sauce and suffed with pork and rice, but the basics are the same. (Tweggi -gogi, Beachu-sam – Pork Cabbage Roll).
Potato pancakes? Mmmmm… I just call them hash browns and buy them by the bag at the foreign food store. Pop those puppies in the ole hot air cooker, toss in some sliced ham and OMG a meal to die for IMO… LOL…
Yep, good ole Korea… Ukranian food… I wonder what a Ukranian can do with a banana???
For sure they used “God” as a reason to justify their deeds, earn lots of money and show almost no sign of regret. It is so disgusting and I am really happy to have left Catholicism.
I totally agree. There is a corruption by money and a corruption by power that is deeply rooted within the church. Over the centuries the church build up a network of influence and supression to stay in power and amass more and more money. That’s why a truly secular state is so urgently needed.
This fucking story showed up on my FB. French Catholic friend - Catholic community…
I replied.
I kept it short and sweet. But fucking shit like this???
Fucking spin doctors. They should do Hitler, and make him out to be a benevolent father figure.
Another frustrating piece of Catholic exculpation. The focus is fully on defending the oh-so-benevolent “Venerable” Bishop Grandin. They shift the guilt away from the “Holy” Catholic church towards the state. No word of regret for the crimes and no sign of “Christian” compassion for the victims. So unmasking…
What can I say??? It’s all about the hat. You gotta have a hat. With the right hat, anything is possible. The right hat can exculpate anyone or anything.
Just look at these bishop headwraps. Anyone wearing one of these must be “Special.” You can’t convict the special of crimes. You have to pat them on their pointy little heads and send them on their way.
Ohh, lovely word, and apt. I also find the Catholic church to be experts in obfuscation. To engage in this nefarious past time they often use biblical hermeneutics and exegesis. But not on this occasion. 
There has got to be a song in here someplace…
If you gotta have a hat, why not make it with thorns?
Show people you really mean business.
Yair.
I thought my black Akubra would do that. Instead, perfect strangers at the shopping centre would say amusing things, such as “G’day Tex” or “Where’s your horse?” So in cold weather I wear my beanie.
Mine is exactly like this, including the band.
Right you are. Now I understand why in the past people with a minor amount of virtue but a larger amount of gold paid large sums to get such a bishop’s hat. As an upgrade, if you’ve got even more money (and even less virtue?..) you can get a fancy cardinal’s hat. Finally, some say if you have even more money (and are even more unscrupulous…) there is one special white hat in Rome to gain…
Who the fuck is this guy??? Lol 
I highlighted his name and put “who is” in google and all I get is newspaper articles.
I guess I’m suppose to just “know” like with the guy in Rome wearing the white hat.
Seems like - same theocratic rhetoric hate talk for the “right” against the evil others.
God will do this - god will do that…blah blah blah 
May Jehovah, Jesus, Allah (the true trinity) continue to dump 
on your empty heads
