I'm part Rusyn. What is your ethnicity? [View All]

This question doesn't usually interest me, but last weekend I found out I belonged to an ethnic group I'd never heard of before.

For most of my life I have believed I was Swedish-Ukrainian--100% Swedish on my father's side, 100% Ukrainian on my mother's. Sometime in my 20s, my mother raised doubt in my mind about her father's family. She knew they were from an area in Eastern Europe that has been at various times the Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Austro-Hungary, Russia and Czecholovakia. It's now extreme Eastern Slovakia, in the Northern Carpathians just south of the Polish High Tatras.

Last month, a distant relative went to the ancestral village and met our mutual cousins still living there, then invited relatives around NYC to see a slide show of her trip. It was then that I learned I am only 1/4 Ukrainian. The other 1/4 is Rusyn, aka Ruthenian, Carpatho-Rusyn, Carpatho-Russian, Lemko, and I've probably forgotten a few. In my research on this lost piece of my inheritance, I've found that Rusyns are known as the Kurds of Eastern Europe because they're a persecuted minority that has been without a homeland. It's probably Rusyn-Americans who have made this characterization. As far as I know, there is no Rusyn Homeland Party.

So now I'm Swedish-Ukrainian-Rusyn. I can't tell you how weird it is to finally know this!