Kissing cousins? Icelandic app warns in case the date is a family member

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Danger of dating family relations an uncomfortable issue in small nation

You meet some body, there is chemistry, then come the basic concerns: what is your title? Come right here usually? Have you been my relative?

In Iceland, a nation with a populace of 320,000 where many many people are distantly associated, accidentally kissing cousins is really a genuine danger.

A brand new smartphone app is readily available to aid Icelanders avoid accidental incest. The software allows users «bump» phones, and emits a caution security if they’re closely associated. «Bump the software before you bump during intercourse,» states the slogan that is catchy.

Most are hailing it as a solution that is welcome a really Icelandic kind of social embarrassment.

«we have all heard the tale of going to a household occasion and operating into a lady you connected with a few time ago,» stated Einar Magnusson, a graphic designer in Iceland’s money, Reykjavik.

«It is a bad feeling once you understand that woman is a cousin that is second. People may think it is funny, but (the software) is absolutely essential.»

‘Incest Prevention Alarm’

The Islendiga-App — «App of Icelanders» — is a thought which could simply be feasible in Iceland, where the majority of the population stocks descent from a team of 9th-century Viking settlers, and where an on-line database holds genealogical information on nearly the whole populace.

The software is made by three University of Iceland computer pc pc software engineering pupils for the competition calling for «new imaginative uses» for the Islendingabok, or Book of Icelanders, a database that is online of and their loved ones trees extending straight right right right back 1,200 years.

Arnar Freyr Adalsteinsson, among the trio, stated it allows any two Icelanders to observe how closely related these are typically, by simply pressing phones.

«A small but much talked about feature could be the loosely translated ‘Incest Prevention Alarm’ that users can allow through the choices menu which notifies the consumer in the event that individual he is bumping with is simply too closely associated,» Adalsteinsson said.

Oahu is the twist that is latest for a long-standing passion for genealogy in Iceland, a volcanically active area within the North Atlantic which was mainly unpopulated before Norse settlers found its way to A.D. 874. Their descendants built a little, fairly homogenous and — crucially — well-organized country, house into the planet’s parliament that is oldest and specialized in thorough record-keeping.

» The Icelandic sagas, discussing 1,000 years back apps like tinychat, all start with web page after web web web page of genealogy. It had been the typical guy documenting their own history,» stated Kari Stefansson, leader of Icelandic biotech business deCODE Genetics, which went the competition behind the software.

Icelandic passion for genealogy

The Book of Icelanders database was created in 1997 by software and deCODE business owner Fridrik Skulason. Put together making use of census information, church documents, household archives and a bunch of other information sources, it claims to possess info on 95 percent of most Icelanders that have resided within the last 300 years.

The database could be scoured online by any Icelandic citizen or resident that is legal. The application helps make the data offered to Icelanders to their cell phones — and adds the feature that is anti-incest.

Now available for Android os phones, it’s been downloaded almost 4,000 times as it was released earlier in the day this thirty days. The creators additionally aspire to develop an iPhone variation.

Stefansson states the «bump» function is definitely an attention-grabbing but reasonably small part of an application that brings Icelanders’ love of genealogy to the century that is 21st.

He additionally hopes it will not convey the incorrect impression about Iceland.

» The nation that is icelandic perhaps not inbred,» he stated. «This application is interesting. The data are made by it far more available. Nevertheless the concept they don’t marry their cousins is of even more interest towards the press when compared to a representation of truth. that it will be utilised by young adults to ensure»

It might additionally be of restricted use. Presently the security just alerts users when they and their brand new acquaintance have typical grandparent, and a lot of people know whom their very first cousins are.

Adalsteinsson stresses that the application has other, less uses that are sexual.

«We included a birthday celebration calendar to ensure that you do not forget your family relations’ birthdays,» he stated.