Links to your past life.....your ancestors

Have you ever visited a country......and felt it was "familiar".....even when you were visiting for the first time? There are times I wonder if the links from the past live within each successive generation, even if one is not instinctively aware of it.

My "familiar" experience is linked with two countries, France and Norway. I am not saying that I would love to live in either permanently, even though I have lived in France. However, it is an odd feeling when I visit the above countries. I get a sense of the familiar, that the environment is not completely unknown, that's it's culture is more easy to relate to. Now of course, this could all be my crazy head running away with itself, or it could be a real link from my ancestral past, living within my family and I. For example, my home country Ireland, is well known for having been invaded by the Vikings. However, only very very recently did I learn that it was primarily the Norwegian Vikings who colonised Ireland.....hmmm. Also, there was previously talk about some of my family coming from France, although that was never proven.

Other examples: Jeremy Irons the actor.....who had a strange sense of connection with West Cork in Ireland, a place he now calls home. In the end....it was found that his ancestors, many generations back....came from just a few miles down the road from where he now lives.

Another example, Brooke Shields, who also felt an affiliation with France....she felt at home there whenever she visited. She was found to have a DIRECT ancestral link to King Louis XIV, one of the greatest French Kings.

It makes you wonder........