ostic

The risky kiss

Do you believe in fate, in love at first sight? Do you sometimes do something spontaneously? Maybe you do, but you certainly do not expect your new partner to be your relative! Or imagine that there might be a tool somewhere that could warn you that you wre about to sleep with a member of your family ?

There is one country in the world, with a population of 320,000 inhabitants, in which casual sex with strangers can be very risky. This place is Iceland. This country has such a tiny population which along with confusing surnames make recognizing who is your relative almost impossible. The main problem is that surname in not passed down through the generation like in most European cultures. Surnames can be a father or a mother’s first name, suffixed with “dottir” or “son”. For example surname Björk Guðmundsdóttir’s name tells us a little about her immediate heritage, we can guess easily that her mother’s first name was Guðmund, but not any further back. So, if you are in a bar late at night and you exchange your surname with a potential partner, you are not giving much information about your exact lineage. Even in the phone book  in Iceland people are listed by their first name.

A catchy slogan says: “Bump the app before you bump in bed” . This is the advertisement for a brand new smartphone app which helps  Icelanders avoid accidental incest. This application emits a warning alarm when people are closely related. It’s a new way for “incest prevention”. The application is very easy to use. Just do a simple “bump” in order to examine your relationship with the other person. It was created for a contest called “new creative uses” at University of Iceland by three smart students from a group named Sad Engineer Studios who are interested in software engineering.  Arnar Freyr Aðalsteinsson, which is one of the developers of the app,  said:

“Icelandic names differ from most current Western name systems as our surname reflects the immediate father (or in some cases mother) of the child and not the historic family lineage. For example, my last name indicates that I’m the son of Aðalsteinn (my father’s name) so therefore I am Aðalsteinsson.” He also adds that “The idea for the incest-prevention feature comes from our culture,” and “Accidentally sleeping with a relative has been a running joke in Icelandic culture for a while”.

The Islendiga-App  called  “App of Icelanders” is only really useful in  Iceland where there is a big online genealogical database which holds details of almost all Icelanders.  Most people share their descent from a small group of 9th century Viking settlers. This genealogical source is called Íslendingabók (translated as The Book of Icelanders).

The Book of Icelanders with their database and genealogy was developed in 1997 by deCODE and software entrepreneur Fridrik Skulason and compiled from church records, census data, family archives and a lot of other information sources. This base has information on about 95% of all Icelanders over the last 300 years. The application with the database is available to every legal citizen of Iceland. Since the Islendiga-App was launched in April 2013, it has been downloaded over 10,000 according to the Play store, with an average rating of 3.9, so, it appears to have many happy users. For now the application is available only for Android phones but the authors want to also develop a version for iPhone. The app is trying to go beyond a basic search function. Arnar added as well that: “In addition to the already available search function where you can search for and find out how you are related to any other Icelander, we added a birthday calendar to make sure you don’t forget your relative’s birthday. The app even reminds you on the date to guarantee you won’t forget it”.

The CEO of Icelandic biotech company deCODE Genetics, Kari Stefansson and organiser of the App contest which The Islendiga-App won,  hopes that it  won’t convey the wrong impression about Iceland. “The Icelandic nation is not inbred,” he said. “This app is interesting. It makes the data much more available. But the idea that it will be used by young people to make sure they don’t marry their cousins is of much more interest to the press than a reflection of reality“.

One of the journalist asked those young inventors if the knew of any cases where incest had been prevented thanks for this new tool. They replied that: “We have no proof that the app has prevented such an unfortunate relation but it’s nice to know a such prevention exists today. One reviewer on Google’s Play Store claims that it would have prevented an incestuous act if he had had it the year before, but we highly suspect it to be a joke.”

Anyway, it is really good to know that there is a tool for people in Iceland who can now trace their genealogical tree whenever or wherever they want with their smartphones.

Sources:

 

,
, , ,

3 réponses à “The risky kiss”

  1. This is really impresive, what we can do nowadays using the latest technology. The great thing about this app is that it prevents people from marrying their cousins but also it is gathering and updating all data about citizens.
    I wish something like that could be impemented in Europe.

  2. Thanks to globalisation and emmigration the risk of being with a family or even somebody from your country is decreasing. However there are still many small towns or tiny countries like Iceland. And especially having a kid with a relative is very risky!! I hope this app will be popular and help reduce genetic diseases 🙂

Laisser un commentaire