{"id":32141,"date":"2015-07-28T03:00:54","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T07:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32141"},"modified":"2015-07-27T20:27:12","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T00:27:12","slug":"viking-genes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/07\/28\/viking-genes\/","title":{"rendered":"Viking genes"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Nautilis<\/em>, Adam Piore<\/a> talks about the project to thoroughly map Icelanders’ DNA:<\/p>\n

In the ninth century there was a Norwegian Viking named Kveldulf, so big and strong that no man could defeat him. He sailed the seas in a long-ship and raided and plundered towns and homesteads of distant lands for many years. He settled down to farm, a very wealthy man.<\/p>\n

Kveldulf had two sons who grew up to become mighty warriors. One joined the service of King Harald Tangle Hair. But in time the King grew fearful of the son\u2019s growing power and had him murdered. Kveldulf vowed revenge. With his surviving son and allies, Kveldulf caught up with the killers, and wielding a double-bladed ax, slew 50 men. He sent the paltriest survivors back to the king to recount his deed and fled toward the newly settled realm of Iceland. Kveldulf died on the journey. But his remaining son Skallagrim landed on Iceland\u2019s west coast, prospered, and had children.<\/p>\n

Skallagrim\u2019s children had children. Those children had children. And the blood and genes of Kveldulf the Viking and Skallagrim his son were passed down the ages. Then, in 1949, in the capital of Reykjavik, a descendent named Kari Stefansson was born.<\/p>\n

Like Kveldulf, Stefansson would grow to be a giant, 6\u20195\u201d, with piercing eyes and a beard. As a young man, he set out for the distant lands of the universities of Chicago and Harvard in search of intellectual bounty. But at the dawn of modern genetics in the 1990s, Stefansson, a neurologist, was lured back to his homeland by an unlikely enticement \u2014 the very genes that he and his 300,000-plus countrymen had inherited from Kveldulf and the tiny band of settlers who gave birth to Iceland.<\/p>\n

Stefansson had a bold vision. He would create a library of DNA from every single living descendent of his nation\u2019s early inhabitants. This library, coupled with Iceland\u2019s rich trove of genealogical data and meticulous medical records, would constitute an unparalleled resource that could reveal the causes \u2014 and point to cures \u2014 for human diseases.<\/p>\n

In 1996, Stefansson founded a company called Decode, and thrust his tiny island nation into the center of the burgeoning field of gene hunting. \u201cOur genetic heritage is a natural resource,\u201d Stefansson declared after returning to Iceland. \u201cLike fish and hot pools.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Nautilis, Adam Piore talks about the project to thoroughly map Icelanders’ DNA: In the ninth century there was a Norwegian Viking named Kveldulf, so big and strong that no man could defeat him. He sailed the seas in a long-ship and raided and plundered towns and homesteads of distant lands for many years. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,7,16],"tags":[183,827,541,513,961],"class_list":["post-32141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-history","category-science","tag-dna","tag-genetics","tag-iceland","tag-research","tag-vikings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8mp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32142,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32141\/revisions\/32142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}