Hello, fellow travelers, I'd love to meet others in my tiny mtDNA haplogroup of Z1a, which is found in the highest concentrations in the Sami (aka Laplander) population of Finland, and in Tibet. Apparently, a woman around 6500 years ago had daughters whose descendants migrated from Siberia to the northern tip of Europe. This is what the 23andMe site says:

"Though women carrying haplogroup Z did not travel east into North America, some turned and migrated west, all the way to the northern tip of Europe. Their maternal-line descendants make up approximately 7% of the Finnish Saami who live there today. The Saami, also known as the Lapps or Laplanders, are an indigenous ethnic group of northern Scandinavia and Russia's Kola peninsula. Evidence suggests that they probably migrated to their homeland from southern Europe after the Ice Age. However, the presence of haplogroup Z, which is virtually nonexistent in the rest of Europe, shows that they have ancestry from the east as well."

My own matrilineal line, as far as I know it, comes from the southern area of Västergotland, known as Tranemo, in Sweden. I'd love to learn more about how this connects back to Siberia. Is there anyone else here with this ancestry? Thanks!