My mtDNA: HV6a

The DNA of my mitochondria, which I inherited from my mother, who inherited it from her mother, etc. is grouped in the haplogroup HV6a.

Davis Simpson < Eileen Simpson < Julia Debreceni < Luyza Daku < Terézia Kaponyás < Juliánna Kovács (b. 1830)

This isn't terribly interesting information in itself. The HV6 haplogroup is largely found found in Iran, Russia, Slovakia and Britain and my maternal line comes from Hungary; Tiszabezded to be precise. Britain is a bit out of the neighbourhood, though, and raises an eyebrow. However, HV6a is a subset of HV6, which means it has thousands of years of its own history. Unfortunately, it appears to be a pretty small group and I can't find much written about it. 

What is most interesting is who my mitochondria matches. I have an exact match from a woman from the Ukraine, which, again, is not surprising. I have a few close matches from Hungary, Russia, and Slovakia, which is par for the course. I have 2 from Germany, which isn't too far away. But, then, I have 3 from Sweden,  including my second closest match, and 1 from Finland. This is odd. 

Closest mtDNA Matches

It's very difficult to fully understand the migration patterns of people hundreds or thousands of years ago but we do know that Swedes did raid and colonize into Russia. They very likely also took back women as slaves. I suspect we'll need a lot more samples to understand how and where our distant maternal lines crossed.