A Sense Of Belonging... Somewhere Else

[merricat]

Merricat I am in the unusual position of living in a parish where my ancestors have been since around 1700 and all the surrounding villages - many of my mum's ancestors go back to the first page of parish records, in several villages within 5 miles of where I'm sitting, tonight.

And as I have posted here before, there are certain houses I feel connected to. 1830s tithe maps and I realised they were farmhouses 'we' had owned. I live in a council house in the corner of a field my family sold - in 1811!

And I feel a rather visceral connection with the land, here. Maybe because I left here and lived 125 miles away for 20 years and I missed it horribly and never felt I truly belonged. (Have lived abroad in that time as well and somehow the disconnect was less on another continent!)

I can't pass a churchyard round here that doesn't have some part of my DNA profile six foot under. And that is probably fairly rare. (A few of the very elderly, when they know "who I am" kinda thing, treat me in a whole different way and will talk affectionately of my family, and that is very, very cool, when they are utter strangers and you discover their grandad was my great grandad's foreman, or whatever).

I can't say how it would feel to feel I belonged anywhere else. (My dad's ancestors come from a mighty 30 miles or so away and I do feel less powerfully attached when I go to those places). But I do often feel other people's disconnection, if that makes an sense? Like, I belong here in a way no-one else does (apart from my kids and the odd local farmer). I don't mean that as arsy as it sounds just that I feel sad that when I go to the churchyard say, in this parish, my blood is under that soil and I'm almost the only one left. Those people who are here now are only here because they are rich enough to buy a corner of it but their descendants won't be here either - they are temporary. Not sure why it feels like that but it does.

From a supernatural kinda POV, it has this weird side effect that I often feel I sort of pass unnoticed through the landscape, when out along the river or the trackways, etc. It's hard to write this in a way that makes sense. But I belong so places that say creep out my husband have no effect on me because I always feel there's nothing here that could hurt me. I know that sounds nuts/weird.

Thanks for such an in depth response, and no it doesn’t sound nuts or arsy at all!

Interestingly, your words make me aware, at least wholly consciously, for the first time in my life, that I am not so sure that I have ever felt that I belong here, the town of my birth. As far as I am aware, my family spreads back a couple of towns away at most, but I have no actual knowledge of much prior to my great grandparents, and even those elude me a little - I don’t know their names or exactly where in the borough they hailed from. Curiously, I don’t yearn to know either, which puzzles me as I have no issue with my roots that I am aware of.

And also, I feel almost no connection to them, not in an emotionally cold sense, but rather I do not feel as though I am an integral part for my family line. I wonder if this is unusual. Perhaps not!
Your post evokes such a rich and deep connection to your surroundings, which is fascinating and quite moving, to me. I cannot imagine feeling this way about my birthplace. I only wonder how having just entered my 40’s I haven’t managed to move away from it yet! It isn’t what I’d call ‘dislike’, just ... disconnected, no sense of true belonging to it.

It’s interesting what there is to learn about ourselves.

My partner loves searching local websites, looking at the town’s history, bemoaning some of the inevitable changes that have altered our town over time. And I often wonder at this. I just don’t feel it. He admits to not caring too much about the place, as creatives we never do feel quite the right fit here, but he still has those pangs, that connection to his roots.

Odd stuff. Perhaps I’m a changeling

 

[Frideswide]

Getting back to Scotland was..... wonderful!

 

[merricat]

I don't know about people but in sheep, especially the mountain breeds, cling to the place they are from and don't try to move beyond the boundaries. Their offspring do the same. If you try to move them somewhere else you have terrible trouble keeping them off the roads and stuff as they try to wander back where they came from. I think the word is "hefted".

More generally though, people who move often stay very attached to the place they came from, even for generations. Look at the US for example. Americans are often very attached to the homeland, even though if may be generations since they were last actually there. Doesn't happen to everyone but it seems to happen enough. I think they are hefted and struggle a wee bit.

I wonder if this would become apparent if I actually did have the opportunity to leave my home town.
My cousin has travelled extensively and settled in many different locations across the globe (now in Scotland), yet he still maintains a desire to return ‘home’, and admits that nowhere compares. He is definitely feeling somewhat hefted!

I imagine this isn’t at all unusual across many species.
We once had a fairly aged cat who, once we moved house, disappeared, even after waiting what we thought was a decent amount of time for her to adjust. A recent neighbour just lost their little kitty to what may be the same fate - they just upped and went back ‘home’. Horribly upsetting, considering the actual odds of them finding it.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

I wonder if this would become apparent if I actually did have the opportunity to leave my home town.
My cousin has travelled extensively and settled in many different locations across the globe (now in Scotland), yet he still maintains a desire to return ‘home’, and admits that nowhere compares. He is definitely feeling somewhat hefted!

I imagine this isn’t at all unusual across many species.
We once had a fairly aged cat who, once we moved house, disappeared, even after waiting what we thought was a decent amount of time for her to adjust. A recent neighbour just lost their little kitty to what may be the same fate - they just upped and went back ‘home’. Horribly upsetting, considering the actual odds of them finding it.

Yes, we had a cat who moved in with a former neighbour when we moved house. She refused to come with us, completely. She was a beautiful cat, and I loved her very much but just had to accept she wanted to stay where she was! (And maybe the neighbour gave her nicer catfood!)

Something else occurs to me, re-reading your post. I do genealogy and uncovered the story of my mum's ancestors - half of whom were Yorkshire farmers and literally the other half of the family - a whole swathe of it - emigrated to the US between 1820s-1870s. (I didn't know this when I lived in the US for a year).

Now the odd thing was, I felt homesick in America but also, somehow, it wasn't unfamiliar. Once I was taken by friends to a place I 'remembered' from a childhood recurring dream. (Although this in another state to where my own family emigrated). And I felt I left a piece of my heart there when I came home and sometimes even now, long to go back - not for a holiday so much as 6 months or a year (Can't afford so it won't happen).

But anyway, via Ancestry.com my American 'cousins' slowly started finding me, and I them, and a couple of lots of them have come on holiday to the UK and spent a day with us. We showed them round the places their ancestors would have known. And they told us the story of what happened to our family in the US (they founded a town in Illinois and so their lives are very well recorded, luckily). And even now, I get occasional new contacts from other US relatives, or messages from relatives who are Brits who have lived in the US - including, recently, two separate ones who are Brits who, like me, felt an urge to go to the US to live and work for a year or a few years, before returning home...

And of the Brits, none of us knew at the time we went to America that we had a large section of our family do the same thing; most staying, but some returning to the UK. It seems like we have a sort of shared urge, that we all inherited. One relative was in another state and we uncovered the fact that a mutual relative had emigrated there in the 1860s to run wool mills and educated himself and became a state attorney in the same town.

 

[IbisNibs]

But I belong so places that say creep out my husband have no effect on me because I always feel there's nothing here that could hurt me. I know that sounds nuts/weird.

Makes sense to me! You can feel how the place has "accepted you" and won't harm you.
Which could of course simply be because you yourself love that place so deeply, and are tuned into it at a very profound level.

 

[Min Bannister]

It seems like we have a sort of shared urge, that we all inherited.

I wonder if what we are talking about here ( and for Merricat too) is actually morphic resonance?
https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance

The link gives a full explanation but this is the pertinent bit.

Thus each individual inherits a collective memory from past members of the species, and also contributes to the collective memory, affecting other members of the species in the future.

 

[PeteS]

Makes sense to me! You can feel how the place has "accepted you" and won't harm you.
Which could of course simply be because you yourself love that place so deeply, and are tuned into it at a very profound level.

Interesting concept that. In the case of my visisting Hulme that I mentioned above, it was a case of feeling at home and how familiar the place seemed to be. Visiting Hampshire a few years ago, from where Ms petes originates we stopped at a tiny graveyard in the middle of nowhere, only to be told that she had 250 ancestors buried there. It seems for some reason we are attracted unconciously to the places previous generations also found attractive. Certainly and without any really previous knowledge I have ended up living in 4 locations over the past 30 plus years which were wholly familiar to previous generations of my family.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

Interesting concept that. In the case of my visisting Hulme that I mentioned above, it was a case of feeling at home and how familiar the place seemed to be. Visiting Hampshire a few years ago, from where Ms petes originates we stopped at a tiny graveyard in the middle of nowhere, only to be told that she had 250 ancestors buried there. It seems for some reason we are attracted unconciously to the places previous generations also found attractive. Certainly and without any really previous knowledge I have ended up living in 4 locations over the past 30 plus years which were wholly familiar to previous generations of my family.

This parish originally had three villages in it and they shared one church (in the next village). I had ancestors and relatives in all three, from around 1700 but in neighbouring villages in several directions, have ancestors as far back as records begin (late 16thC) so probably much further, given they're farmers so literally passing the land from generation to generation.

I moved here before I'd done much genealogy and didn't know I even had family here, because I grew up the other side of the river and There Be Dragons this side, to us, growing up. Not long after I was randomly given this house to rent, (I was desperate for a home, and so put down a huge selection of places on the forms), we noticed as we drove past (but never got out of the car) this one massive gravestone in the churchyard. I felt drawn to it. But assumed from a distance it was something like a disaster in a long forgotten mill or whatever. Turned out to be the grave of a group of people who drowned on the river, in an accident in the 1830s. So I get compelled to find out more. I just have to find out about this accident - even tracking down and talking to a woman who wrote the sole monograph about it.

Then, several years on finally send for the birth certificate of my great grandad, I think it was. His mother's surname is the same as one of the survivors of the accident I'd spent years researching. Common name though, so I have to do a bit more research but it didn't take long to establish that my great uncle X 3 was one of the three survivors of the accident and gave the main evidence at the inquest. I descend from his sister. I almost knew his words off by heart. And he'd been one of 'mine' all along. That story had haunted me. Turned out I was distantly related to several of the drowned people, the survivor, and one of the other witnesses who had been on the river bank when the accident happened.


Elsewhere in this village is a farm my dad's ancestors bought in the 1790s and lived in til the 1860s. That is the lone point on my family tree where one of my dad's ancestors married one of my mum's! And one of the farms I used to walk the dog past every day, long before I found this out, and think "I could walk in there now and know my way around."

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

I wonder if what we are talking about here ( and for Merricat too) is actually morphic resonance?
https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance

The link gives a full explanation but this is the pertinent bit.

I don't think that's far fetched. Been watching the birds in my garden today and if one is spooked and takes flight from the bird feeders - they all do, without even seeming to look at eachother, they are somehow connected. I guess another subset of that is when you can feel someone staring at the back of your head turn round - and they are. Sort of instinctive.

 

[merricat]

I wonder if what we are talking about here ( and for Merricat too) is actually morphic resonance?
https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance

The link gives a full explanation but this is the pertinent bit.

This is interesting. There’s a fascinating paragraph in there discussing morphic resonance as a potential explanation for telepathy - how pets can sense our arrival home before we actually appear, etc.

Also, a teensy little coincidence; he discusses radiolaria, a Protozoa, which I have only previously come across reference to in one of the Moomin books (mentioned up thread!) where the character Toft discovers a book describing them...the concept grows and distorts within his mind over time until he eventually encounters one in the valley!

 

[merricat]

Interesting concept that. In the case of my visisting Hulme that I mentioned above, it was a case of feeling at home and how familiar the place seemed to be. Visiting Hampshire a few years ago, from where Ms petes originates we stopped at a tiny graveyard in the middle of nowhere, only to be told that she had 250 ancestors buried there. It seems for some reason we are attracted unconciously to the places previous generations also found attractive. Certainly and without any really previous knowledge I have ended up living in 4 locations over the past 30 plus years which were wholly familiar to previous generations of my family.

As this thread progresses I am becoming even more intrigued as to why I don’t appear to be able to rustle up any interest in my ancestors whereabouts. This isn’t something that I have given much thought to previously. I am now pondering my childhood. Did my family exhibit any sort of connection to it’s past, talk about historical family members, etc ? I’m sure they did.

Not sure if it makes a difference, but we have always been a very ‘small’ family. Only a handful of aunts/uncles/couple of cousins, and only two of these cousins had children of their own, although they had by then moved far away. Could having a larger family, with perhaps many more little ones in the mix create more potential for interest? Or am I weird!? Is it because neither myself nor my sister became parents ourselves?

What is it that pushes us to connect with them?

I did always feel a tad different growing up, as if I didn’t quite belong ‘here’, and often even with ‘them’, but I was very close to my family regardless. I just always had a feeling of needing to find my ‘people’, which turned out to be via friendships rather than relations, who still, however we have matured, perceive me to be the ‘different’ one, for various reasons (my profession, education, life choices, etc).

A lot to mull over.

 

[David Plankton]

I did always feel a tad different growing up, as if I didn’t quite belong ‘here’,

Daft question, but I have to ask - any chance you're adopted?

 

[merricat]

Daft question, but I have to ask - any chance you're adopted?

Haha, no I doubt that very much, there are too many similar physical characteristics for one.

I think it may come down to family dynamics. Perhaps I did not feel a strong enough connection to them?

 

[Coal]

It's worth remembering that we're all the product of four grandparents and eight great grandparents etc...so it's odd that one branch of the family tree's locale would pull at one more than the other seven, say.

 

[merricat]

It's worth remembering that we're all the product of four grandparents and 16 great grandparents etc...so it's odd that one branch of the family tree's locale would pull at one more than the other fifteen, say.

True!
Now I am wondering about the possible link to Scandinavia for me - why would my leanings bypass several generations here in the uk and plunge solely into the Scandi element?
Watch this space, a few months will pass, I will explore my family tree and then have to report back that I have a connection to Edvard Munch!

 

[David Plankton]

16 great grandparents etc.

8, but I know you meant that.

 

[Coal]

8, but I know you meant that.

Oops. Ta. (I had great-great in my mind for some reason, but wrote 'great')

 

[PeteS]

Haha, no I doubt that very much, there are too many similar physical characteristics for one.

I think it may come down to family dynamics. Perhaps I did not feel a strong enough connection to them?

Perhaps family dynamics is the key- with a large and close family you discover all the information you need.I had neither of these advantages really so most of the info I have gleaned has been from research of my family tree. Hence my continued surprise on discovering places I have worked/lived correspond so very closely to the experience of my parents and their families. Quite uncannily in fact.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

It's worth remembering that we're all the product of four grandparents and eight great grandparents etc...so it's odd that one branch of the family tree's locale would pull at one more than the other seven, say.

Yes, I've seen this with genealogists - they'll be intrigued by some branches of their family, and ignore others.

I suspect I was interested in it as my mum died young, and her mum had also died young so there was so little anecdotally I knew or could remember about that side, that I got curious. The weird thing is, my dad's side are, technically, 'more interesting', diverse and largely pretty well off, so they leave a better paper trail - mum just descended almost entirely from Yorkshire farmers. Yet I feel more connected to her side, in most ways. Maybe compensating for that loss. You do develop favourite ancestors from the stories you piece together and it is often random how much of a paper trail anyone in the past left. For those people who are just a name, a set of dates, and possibly if you're lucky, an occupation/location - you're always not going to feel so connected as people who have done something interesting, or left some kind of an account even of a fragment of their lives. Most people though are, in Keats' words, just "a name writ on water".

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

True!
Now I am wondering about the possible link to Scandinavia for me - why would my leanings bypass several generations here in the uk and plunge solely into the Scandi element?
Watch this space, a few months will pass, I will explore my family tree and then have to report back that I have a connection to Edvard Munch!

I always loved all things Scandinavian to the point I spent three years of my life immersed in Old Norse... A few years back, my brother developed Dupuytren's contracture, sometimes called 'the Vikings' disease'... Well, that figured! Never done the DNA tests on Ancestry - but that kind of thing might give you some answers.

 

[Coal]

Never done the DNA tests on Ancestry - but that kind of thing might give you some answers.

Maybe, but I'd council taking a careful read of the small print, because I'll be surprised if those guys are not selling their DNA databases on the quiet.

 

[Rabbit Will Run]

Are you in the UK, Merricat? Ancestry.co.uk should be free at your local library. I worked in libraries for ten years and I think it's a nationwide scheme to have a subscription in every library equipped with computers. There should also be someone there trained to help you - it was me in our branch and I always loved people coming in for help!

I've definitely had similar inexplicable feelings, although I did go down the 'past life' route and tried self regression. Not sure how convinced I am, but it was an interesting exercise!

 

[PeteS]

Maybe, but I'd council taking a careful read of the small print, because I'll be surprised if those guys are not selling their DNA databases on the quiet.

It's certainly something to take into account, but quite what they'd make off mine, I don't know.

 

[Coal]

It's certainly something to take into account, but quite what they'd make off mine, I don't know.

My unsubstantiated suspicion is that medical insurance companies will be in the market for such data, then family medical histories can be used to skew medical insurance costs to those who seem more likely to get certain illnesses. Much like the difficulty of insuring flood hit houses, those with strong family histories of (say) strokes, will not be able to insure against the costs of treating such.

 

[PeteS]

My unsubstantiated suspicion is that medical insurance companies will be in the market for such data, then family medical histories can be used to skew medical insurance costs to those who seem more likely to get certain illnesses. Much like the difficulty of insuring flood hit houses, those with strong family histories of (say) strokes, will not be able to insure against the costs of treating such.

Something that also occurred to me as well, but since I'll never go private health again, and I'm completely immune to any sort of marketing etc I would probably be safe. I've yet to be convinced just how accurate these profiles are anyway. Might be interesting though.

 

[XBergMann]

Has anyone else experienced anything like this? It strikes me that it most likely isn’t all that uncommon, but I haven’t actually met anyone who can relate to it in my everyday life.

Ever since I was a young child, I have experienced a very strong and almost painful sense of ‘belonging’ somewhere else. In this case, I would have to say Scandinavia, although Norway, Sweden and Finland seem to merge together for me here (having never actually travelled to any of these places, it would possibly be deemed more appropriate to say Scandinavia, so please humour me!).

It’s a curious sensation: I recall being around 4 yrs old, travelling in the back of my parents car at night time, watching the surrounding lights zip past, the glow of lights in the distance...and feeling this very strong, painful longing for ‘home’. All that was certain to me at that time was that this home was not my usual place of habitation, but somewhere colder and ‘far away’. This sensation recurred fairly frequently, and as I grew older and came to know a little more about the world at large, it seemed that Scandinavia, especially Norway, was the ‘place’ that I had been feeling all those years.

It isn’t easy to describe this, it does look a tad silly written down! But I can only tell it as I know it, if you see what I mean.

As an adult, it only became stronger, as in I did not grow out of it.
Now that I am more aware of these countries, the ‘lights’ of my memory and associated sensations, even songs, books, paintings, still (often) quite achingly draw me there. The sensation has grown rather than diminished as I have learned more about the culture, art, landscape, etc. My partner often laughs and talks of the lack of light with a shudder, but this concept delights me, fills me with a sense of completion, as optimal somehow - I am an illustrator, and have always (not entirely consciously) tended to explore this via my work.

As silly as it sounds, I can’t deny it, but have no real explanation for why this has been with me for so long.

Has anyone else ever experienced such a strong association with something that ought to be unknown to them? It is too easy to suggest past lives, but this doesn’t seem sufficient to me, although my mind is always open!

One day, I may Visit

I have a similar although slightly tangential story to relate.

Putting aside the fact that I live in Ukraine, I am originally from Cambridge (the real one not the facsimile), my parents are from Scotland and a city up north so to speak.

Back in the early 90s my younger brother moved to Berlin and after a few months I came to visit for a long weekend. My brother's apartment was in the old Soviet sector of the city usually known as East Berlin.

I had a constant deja-vu type feeling as I walked around the streets of East Berlin, I felt completely at home, the architecture had a sense of familiarity about it even though it was completely different to that which I had known in Cambridge and later in London. Bearing in mind I did not speak a word of German in those days I did not get lost in much the same way that one can walk around one's home town on auto-pilot. yet this was my first ever visit to Berlin and Soviet themed East Berlin was certainly not the dreaming spires of Cambridge.

Anyway wind on 10 years or so and my mother was recovering from a hip replacement operation so was spending a lot of time lying down. In order to keep her mind busy she started researching her ancestors.

Even though my Mum is from the Outer Hebridies (islands off the top of Scotland) she discovered that her relatives back in the 1800s were all from what became Prussia and then Brandenburg - this being the state (Lander) that surrounds Berlin. Further digging threw up ancestors who were registered in the Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg boroughs of what became East Berlin. These were the very streets I was walking around beneath a welcoming cloud of familiarity and nagging deja-vu.

Since then I have lived in Hong Kong, Sydney, Frankfurt and now Kiev and I have never experienced this sense of familiarity in a new place that I discovered in East Berlin.

In fact I felt so at home in East Berlin that I moved there and lived there very happily for 6 years before moving to Australia and when I returned from Australia to Europe it was Berlin I moved to not the UK because I felt at home in Berlin.

 

[merricat]

I have a similar although slightly tangential story to relate.

Putting aside the fact that I live in Ukraine, I am originally from Cambridge (the real one not the facsimile), my parents are from Scotland and a city up north so to speak.

Back in the early 90s my younger brother moved to Berlin and after a few months I came to visit for a long weekend. My brother's apartment was in the old Soviet sector of the city usually known as East Berlin.

I had a constant deja-vu type feeling as I walked around the streets of East Berlin, I felt completely at home, the architecture had a sense of familiarity about it even though it was completely different to that which I had known in Cambridge and later in London. Bearing in mind I did not speak a word of German in those days I did not get lost in much the same way that one can walk around one's home town on auto-pilot. yet this was my first ever visit to Berlin and Soviet themed East Berlin was certainly not the dreaming spires of Cambridge.

Anyway wind on 10 years or so and my mother was recovering from a hip replacement operation so was spending a lot of time lying down. In order to keep her mind busy she started researching her ancestors.

Even though my Mum is from the Outer Hebridies (islands of the top of Scotland) she discovered that her relatives back in the 1800s were all from what became Prussia and then Brandenburg - this being the state (Lander) that surrounds Berlin. Further digging threw up ancestors who were registered in the Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg boroughs of what became East Berlin. These were the very streets I was walking around beneath a welcoming cloud of familiarity and nagging deja-vu.

Since then I have lived in Hong Kong, Sydney, Frankfurt and now Kiev and I have never experienced this sense of familiarity in a new place that I discovered in East Berlin.

In fact I felt so at home in East Berlin that I moved there and lived there very happily for 6 years before moving to Australia and when I returned from Australia to Europe it was Berlin I moved to not the UK because I felt at home in Berlin.

Thanks for sharing that. I’m becoming even more intrigued by the ancestral connections mentioned on this thread.

If there’s a direct link to feelings of belonging and our far flung past, I wonder why only some of us perceive the ‘pull’...no other relatives of mine share my interest.

 

[merricat]

Ok, been discussing this today with a friend.
He can get along with the genetic memory element, but I told him that if we dig deep enough, won’t we find ancestors in most places? Confirmation bias?

It makes some sense to me, but if this is the case, wouldn’t many people all over the world be constantly stuck with this sense of longing? How many Aussies with uk ancestors must experience this? Or do they simply think ‘bugger that I’ll stay right here with my sunnies on!’

 

[Min Bannister]

It makes some sense to me, but if this is the case, wouldn’t many people all over the world be constantly stuck with this sense of longing? How many Aussies with uk ancestors must experience this? Or do they simply think ‘bugger that I’ll stay right here with my sunnies on!’

I can only imagine (provided the theory is true of course) that it simply doesn't happen to everyone, in the same way that not everyone can roll their tongue or smell violets. In fact it seems as if it is quite rare.

 

[IbisNibs]

I did always feel a tad different growing up, as if I didn’t quite belong ‘here’, and often even with ‘them’, but I was very close to my family regardless. I just always had a feeling of needing to find my ‘people’, which turned out to be via friendships rather than relations, who still, however we have matured, perceive me to be the ‘different’ one, for various reasons (my profession, education, life choices, etc).

Your experience is consistent with that of many of my artist friends. They are the "different" ones in their families, and seek out their "people" among friends who often are very creative in one way or another, and who also tend to be the "different" ones in their own families. Also they aren't very concerned with making as much money as possible and buying houses or having children. Seeking new experiences and ideas, traveling and making things seem to be their priorities.

It seems for some reason we are attracted unconsciously to the places previous generations also found attractive. Certainly and without any really previous knowledge I have ended up living in 4 locations over the past 30 plus years which were wholly familiar to previous generations of my family.

I find this an interesting point, and one that makes a lot of sense -- preferences can be passed down through families, and when you consider that those most comfortable in a particular place would thrive best there, and would likely have more descendants.

It's still a peculiar thing though, that one could be infused with such longing for a place that one's ancestors hadn't known for a thousand years or more.