Íslendingabók — meaning “book of Icelanders” — is an online incest avoidance search engine. Plug in your name and that of a potential mate, and the site searches a genealogical database to see how closely you’re related. It’s likely that you’ll have some overlap many generations back — in which case you’re probably safe from mutant children. But if you share great-grandparents, you might want to reconsider your Nordic hookup.
But there’s a twist! As GlobalPost reports, new research says sexing with a distant cousin is actually beneficial for fertility, as your genes are more comptable than someone from the other side of the planet. So, avoid creepy incest, but seek out good incest. Iceland — constantly at the top of quality of life lists, and an easy place to sleep with an attractive cousin. [GlobalPost via TNW]
Photo: Stephane333
Adam
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:40 AMScandanavian girls are hot, and now there is incest? I need to get there.
TheBludger
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 6:12 PMIceland is not part of Scandinavia. Sorry to disappoint you.
Sigurður
Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 3:31 PM@TheBludger: Icelanders are decendants of Norwegian settlers who took celtic women as their wifes, just as Swedish vikings did with russian and baltic women in the Viking age, ergo: Icelanders are ethnicly scandinavians, although the the country is an Island and not connected to the mainland.
TSH
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 11:09 AMmoar liek wincest amirite?
Matt L
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 12:28 PMNo…. No, I can’t say you are.
chrisp
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 12:41 PMThat would explain Bjork.
Ozoneocean
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 1:20 PMThey’ve had that system for a while, but they don’t “need” it. Obviously the data was already around, they have records for over a thousand years… Apparently jokes about incest there are really, REALLY frowned upon.
illogical
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 8:13 PMThis is also the same in other places. Some Arab countries, for example, need a background/DNA check before you get married to make sure you aren’t accidentally marrying *too* within the family.
Friðrik Skúlason
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:47 AMIt is interesting to note that on a per-capita basis, Islendingabok is the world’s most popular database, with more than half of the entire Icelandic population being registered users.
Actually http://www.islendingabok.is has been online for over 10 years, and there is also a Facebook app that will tell you how closely you are related to all your Facebook friends (provided that you and they are in the database and didn’t lie about name or date of birth).
If you pick any two people in Iceland at random (well, excluding a few adoptees and recent immigrants or others not of Icelandic origin), you will always find a common ancestor – on the average 6 or 7 generations back…very rarely up to 10 generations back.
While it is certainly possible to use the database for the purpose of incest avoidance, I am not aware of that ever happening – in fact, the only case of accidental incest I know of was discovered not with the help of the database, but when the couple went to visit the girl’s grandmother…it turned out they were half-siblings who were not aware of each others existence previously.