It was recently discovered that the maternal side of US president-elect Donald Trump’s family can trace their roots back to Iceland. Now some Icelanders are wondering if he still has relatives in the country.
As reported by Vísir, Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was born in the village of Tong on the Island of Lewis, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. These islands have always been closely connected to Iceland; for centuries, dating back to the Viking Age, people have traveled (voluntarily and otherwise) between Iceland and these islands.
A closer look at MacLeod’s family tree by Icelandic historians brought to light that one of her forefathers was an Icelander named Ljótur. He had two sons, Þorkell and Þormóður, or Torquil and Tormod MacLeod, in the Scottish iteration. Tormod would eventually settle in the Hebrides, and the maternal lineage of Donald Trump took root there.
Delving further into the matter, Vísir points out that there are many place names in central west Iceland that have Celtic origins – the Akranes area especially so. This, naturally, raised the question: are any of Donald Trump’s distant Icelandic relatives still living in Iceland today?
Numerous locals were asked if they knew anyone who resembled either Trump or his mother. No one was able to say for certain, and the search ultimately reached a dead end. As such, whether or not Trump has any Icelandic relatives may remain a mystery, barring the president-elect actually submitting a DNA sample for testing.
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