"Saying, 'Who's he?' And 'Who's she?' And 'Do you know her? Let's check on the book of Icelanders if he or she is related to you or me.'" Icelanders, on average, can trace a common ancestor seven generations back, Gudmundsson explained. "It's often done when you are meeting people," Gudmundsson said. Jóhannesson (back to a common ancestor in the 1600s), and Bjork (a slightly closer connection, back to the 1700s). Upon request, the national archivist also demonstrated how closely he's related to current-day famous Icelanders - President Guðni Th. The website also revealed Gudmundsson's lineage went back several hundred years further, to ancient ancestors mentioned in the Sagas, the famed medieval Icelandic stories. Gudmundsson logged into Islendingabok this week from the National Archives in Reykjavik, tracing his roots back to ancestors listed in the world's oldest existing comprehensive census, taken in 1703 on the order of the King of Denmark to investigate reports of poor conditions on the island. The result: an online Book of Icelanders, or "Islendingabok" in the native tongue, a treasure trove of family trees tracing Icelanders back generations. "They are the memory of our nation, and without that we wouldn't know who we are." DeCODE digitized these records and others from private collections, a massive project, Stefansson said. "We have 44 kilometers of paper documents, and the oldest document is from 1185 or thereabouts," Eirikur Gudmundsson, director general at the National Archives of Iceland, said in an interview. Iceland has also kept meticulous genealogical records - some natives can trace their roots back to the 9th century.
The Nordic island country's homogeneity isn't the only thing going for it when it comes to genetic research. "That means there are relatively few ancestors that account for a large percent of the current-day population." And that means that rare genetic variants important in disease - either as culprits contributing to illness or as protectors against it - show themselves more readily in the genes of Icelanders than they would in "outbred" populations, as Stefansson puts it. "There happens to be a population founder effect" here, Stefansson explained. Few places have the ideal conditions for genetic research provided by Iceland. Two decades later, the United States and other nations and companies are seeking to follow suit, sequencing the genomes of millions of people to glean new avenues for medicine and drug development. Stefansson is chief executive and founder of deCODE Genetics, a Reykjavik-based company that set out in 1996 to mine the unique genetic makeup of Stefansson's native land. People who know him, or know of him, would describe him as anything but. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or LowerĪ "simple man, living in a backwater country, with modest aspirations" - that's how Iceland's Kari Stefansson described himself this week from his office in Reykjavik.
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