By NATALIA HAWK
You know what sucks?
When you go to work, or university, or a bar, and you meet someone amazing with great hair and a fantastic smile.
You talk to this amazing person and you really get along. You think maybe… the two of you could get it on sometime.
So you go on dates, you meet each other’s parents. You talk about your hopes and dreams for the future. When the time is right, you get engaged and then married. You have kids and they’re perfect.
And then you somehow find out THAT YOU’RE RELATED.
Awkward.
That, my friends, is INCEST; one of the major taboos in society ever since the 1800s when we decided maybe marrying people we aren’t related to might be delightful?
Unfortunately, incest is a major issue in the snow-capped mountaintop land of Iceland. This is because Iceland has a population of just over 300,000 people.
To put that in perspective for you – in 2010, the population of Sydney, Australia was over 4 million. Even the city of Canberra has a bigger population (and we wouldn’t want the pollies interbreeding, would we?).
If you live in Iceland, it’s extremely likely that you are somehow related to the person who sits next to you at work. Or the person standing next to you at the bus stop.
That’s why clever Icelanders have developed a new incest app to ensure that you can know the intimate details of someone’s family tree from the get-go.
The app is called Islendigna and has a feature called “Sifjaspellsspillir” (how does one even pronounce that? Seriously people, remember that word and use it to win your next game of Scrabble) which translates to “Incest Destroyer”. Nice.
This from NBC.com:
The app draws information from the Íslendingabók database, a national record of Iceland residents and family trees dating back into the Middle Ages.
…When you tap phones with someone who has the app, it brings up an alert if the owners of the two phones share a grandparent. (Of course, if you don’t already know who you share a grandparent with, incest may be the least of your problems, but the team says it is looking into functionality for spotting common great grandparents, too.)
So. Do you think there’s a market for an Australian version? Or a worldwide version?
Personally, I would want one if I ever went, say, speed-dating in Poland. My parents are Polish and so were their parents and their parents’ parents and judging by the amount of second cousins I met last time I was there… I may just be related to the entire country.
I’m not personally worried about Australia because there be no fam-bam here. But I do legitimately know a guy who met someone at uni in Sydney and flirted with them – only to discover days later that they were second cousins.
Such awkwardness would never have happened if he’s had the Sifjaspellsspillir feature, now would it?
Then again, my colleague Rosie just told me that every single one of us are descended from the Iceman (the things you learn from Ancient History in high school!), so perhaps we should just give up and go with it?
Em & Dave spoke about this very app on Mamamia Today yesterday. Have a listen to the hilarious audio below:
What does Australia need an app for?
Top Comments
Haha, hilarious Nat. And handy, too. I am close friends with a couple who found out they were related, after seeing each other after a couple of months. However, the relation is through their great-grandparents, or something along those lines anyway. They checked it out with their respective GP's, and all was given the A-OK. They've been together for two years now, and they're so in love. If there's nothing medically or legally funky going on, then I guess it all comes down to perception. I believe we are all related in some way - every single one of us right across the globe. How many times have you met someone who is the cousin twice removed of your best friend's great uncle's dog's previous owner, or something to that effect?
In any case, two persons in question are so happy together that it really doesn't matter, because there is nothing problematic about their distant relation, really. And they make more jokes about it than anybody else. When asked how they met, they say "ancestry.com".
Excuse I but our queen is married to her cousin Philip was her Greek cousin she was head over heels for him. quite common practice for cousins to marry in royal families of Europe. The prodigious queen Victoria had umpteen children (they call her the grandmother of europe) many married their cousins. the last Tzar of Russia was the image of the British King they were first cousins. read about his son and hemophilia.... In modern times seems they are reaching for new genes - marrying commoners. Another recommended book is "middlesex" fascinating and amusing story on this subject you can get it on iBooks,