Íslendingabók (genealogical database)

Íslendingabók (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈistlɛntɪŋkaˌpouk], literally 'book of Icelanders') is a database created by the biotechnology company deCODE genetics, attempting to record the genealogy of all Icelanders who have ever lived, insofar as sources are available; a total of approximately 810,000 people are recorded.[1] The database is likely to contain information on about half of all Icelanders who have lived in Iceland since its settlement. It is part of a wider scheme that has been characterised as 'one of the first, and to date most contentious' attempts to assemble a large genetic database.[2]

Íslendingabók gets its name from the first history of Iceland, by Ari the Wise; the choice of name, and the project as a whole, has been interpreted as a public-relations excerise by deCODE, appealing to Icelandic public nationalist sentiments.[3]

History

Interest in genealogy in Iceland is strong, with the Icelandic Ættfræðifélagið (Genealogical Society) founded in 1945; shortly before, Halldór Laxness had proposed a similar gathering of information to that manifested in Íslendingabók today; Friðrik Skúlason of FRISK Software International began constructing a genealogical database of Icelanders in the 1990s, successfully developing and marketing genealogical software (called Espólín).[4]

'In 1997 deCODE allegedly approached the Icelandic government with the draft of a bill which would legislate the granting of a twelve-year licence for a private bio-technology company to create and manage a centralised database of national medical records', later known as the Icelandic Health Sector Database.[5] The proposal was 'shrewdly positioned [...] to be attractive to several powerful players: venture capital; the welfare state; its marketised counterpart the so-called healthcare maintenance organizations; and the insurance industry'.[6] The Icelandic Parliament legalised the creation of the database on 17 December, granting the license for its fulfilment to deCODE in January 2000; the bill was heavily criticised by some scholars and medical professionals due to ethical problems it raised, but the Icelandic public did not generally share these concerns.[7]

Various sources were used in compiling the genealogy, including censuses, national registers, and church records. Icelanders is the only genealogical database in the world covering the population of a whole country. DeCODE put the database together in collaboration with Friðrik Skúlason of FRISK Software International in order to take advantage of genealogical information in its genetic research:[8] by linking genealogical data with genetic data and with medical records, it is possible to draw inferences about the functions of genes that would otherwise be obscure. The genealogy has contained mistakes, and some have been corrected following comments from the public.[9]

Access and privacy

Íslendingabók is privately owned by DeCODE genetics.[10]

One version of the database is only available to deCODE, and is anonymised; 'a complex process of encryption, surveillance and monitoring has been designed to prevent any illegitimate use of the data'.[11] Where genetic data in this version of the database proves that the database is wrong, data is simply removed; the public version is not updated.[12]

All Icelanders can access the database using their national identity number, once they have requested a password that is delivered by post, to see information about themselves and seek information about their ancestry.[13] In this version, people can explore their own relationship to any Icelander, but not the relationships of other Icelanders.[14] Later modifications made it possible to record genealogical information in addition to people's biological parents; 'all children who are registered in the National Registry are automatically added to the Íslendingabók website'.[15]

Reception and controversy

Although criticism of the wider project to create an Icelandic Health Sector Database combining genealogical, medical, and genetic records has been extensive,[16] Íslendingabók itself has been popular:

the responses to the genealogies on the Web were overwhelming. Overnight, the Book of Icelanders became a popular pastime. In a few weeks, one hundred thousand Icelanders, a substantial proportion of the total population of three hundred thousand, requested a password to explore their relations with neighbours, colleagues, and friends [...] Soon the database became a party game. Newspaper reports and discussions on the Web indicate that families actively search for genealogical connections during informal social occasions, including dinner parties.[17]

It now receives about 1000 logins per day on weekends and 1500 on weekdays.[18]

The database has, however, been controversial for revealing relationships that people had attempted to hide, particularly in cases of illegitimacy.[19]

The database was the subject of a lawsuit by a publisher of genealogical studies used by the database, Genealogic Islandorum, on the grounds that deCODE had plagiarised their publications; the case fell in the Icelandic supreme court.[20]

Spin-offs

'In early 2013, deCODE Genetics and the University of Iceland’s School of Engineering and Natural Sciences challenged the nation’s university students to design a smart phone app for the online genealogical database Íslendingabók for its 10th anniversary', offering a prize of 1m Icelandic krónur. The winning app, “ÍslendingaApp”, was designed by Alexander Annas Helgason, Arnar Freyr Aðalsteinsson, and Hákon Þrastar Björnsson, as Sad Engineer Studios (SES), and was widely reported in international media.[21]

External links

References

  1. ↑ Larissa Kyzer, 'It’s Not Just An Anti-Incest App', The Reykjavík Grapevine, May 10, 2013, http://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2013/05/10/its-not-just-an-anti-incest-app/.
  2. ↑ Arnar Árnason and Bob Simpson, 'Refractions through Culture: The New Genomics in Iceland', Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 68:4 (2003), 533-53 (p. 534), DOI: 10.1080/0014184032000160550.
  3. ↑ Arnar Árnason and Bob Simpson, 'Refractions through Culture: The New Genomics in Iceland', Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 68:4 (2003), 533-53 (p. 546-47), DOI: 10.1080/0014184032000160550.
  4. ↑ Gísli Pálsson, 'The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine', in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. by Sandra C. Bamford, James Leach, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality, 15 (Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 84-110 (pp. 90-92).
  5. ↑ Beth Greenhough, 'A Biotechnological Settlement? Making Space for ‘Human Nature’ at Iceland’s Genomics Frontier', LANDABRÉFIÐ 21(1) (2005), 3-19 (pp. 4-5).
  6. ↑ H. Rose, 'Gendered Genetics in Iceland', New Genetics and Society, 20(2) (2001), 119–138 (p. 125), quoted by Beth Greenhough, 'A Biotechnological Settlement? Making Space for ‘Human Nature’ at Iceland’s Genomics Frontier', LANDABRÉFIÐ 21(1) (2005), 3-19 (p. 5).
  7. ↑ Beth Greenhough, 'A Biotechnological Settlement? Making Space for ‘Human Nature’ at Iceland’s Genomics Frontier', LANDABRÉFIÐ 21(1) (2005), 3-19 (p. 5).
  8. ↑ Beth Greenhough, 'A Biotechnological Settlement? Making Space for ‘Human Nature’ at Iceland’s Genomics Frontier', LANDABRÉFIÐ 21(1) (2005), 3-19 (p. 5).
  9. ↑ Gísli Pálsson, 'The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine', in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. by Sandra C. Bamford, James Leach, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality, 15 (Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 84-110 (pp. 100-103).
  10. ↑ Office of science policy and planning and national institute of health. Iceland’s research resources: the health sector databases, genealogy databases and biobanks (2004). http://grants.nih.gov/grants/icelandic_research.pdf.
  11. ↑ Gísli Pálsson, 'The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine', in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. by Sandra C. Bamford, James Leach, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality, 15 (Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 84-110 (p. 93).
  12. ↑ Gísli Pálsson, 'The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine', in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. by Sandra C. Bamford, James Leach, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality, 15 (Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 84-110 (p. 103).
  13. ↑ Gísli Pálsson, 'The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine', in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. by Sandra C. Bamford, James Leach, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality, 15 (Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 84-110 (p. 94).
  14. ↑ Gísli Pálsson, 'The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine', in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. by Sandra C. Bamford, James Leach, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality, 15 (Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 84-110 (p. 100).
  15. ↑ Larissa Kyzer, 'It’s Not Just An Anti-Incest App', The Reykjavík Grapevine, May 10, 2013, http://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2013/05/10/its-not-just-an-anti-incest-app/.
  16. ↑ Arnar Árnason and Bob Simpson, 'Refractions through Culture: The New Genomics in Iceland', Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 68:4 (2003), 533-53 (p. 546-47), DOI: 10.1080/0014184032000160550.
  17. ↑ Gísli Pálsson, 'The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine', in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. by Sandra C. Bamford, James Leach, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality, 15 (Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 84-110 (p. 96).
  18. ↑ Gísli Pálsson, 'The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine', in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. by Sandra C. Bamford, James Leach, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality, 15 (Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 84-110 (p. 97).
  19. ↑ Gísli Pálsson, 'The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine', in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. by Sandra C. Bamford, James Leach, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality, 15 (Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 84-110 (p. 103).
  20. ↑ Gísli Pálsson, 'The Web of Kin: An Online Genealogical Machine', in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. by Sandra C. Bamford, James Leach, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality, 15 (Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 84-110 (pp. 99-100).
  21. ↑ Larissa Kyzer, 'It’s Not Just An Anti-Incest App', The Reykjavík Grapevine, May 10, 2013, http://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2013/05/10/its-not-just-an-anti-incest-app/.
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