Bring Us Your Genes
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.
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’s 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’s west coast, prospered, and had children.
Skallagrim’s 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.
Like Kveldulf, Stefansson would grow to be a giant, 6’5”, 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—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.
Stefansson had a bold vision. He would create a library of DNA from every single living descendent of his nation’s early inhabitants. This library, coupled with Iceland’s rich trove of genealogical data and meticulous medical records, would constitute an unparalleled resource that could reveal the causes—and point to cures—for human diseases.
In 1996, Stefansson founded a company called Decode, and thrust his tiny island nation into the center of the burgeoning field of gene hunting. “Our genetic heritage is a natural resource,” Stefansson declared after returning to Iceland. “Like fish and hot pools.”
Stefansson set sail on an epic journey. He and his crew collected DNA from 150,000 of their fellow countrymen (half the population) and constructed a genealogical chart that accounts for the family tree of virtually every member of the small island nation. Next they succeeded in reading the entire 3-billion nucleotide genetic sequences of more than 11,000 Icelanders. They could now infer the individual genomes of the entire Icelandic population. Then they embarked on a massive treasure hunt for individual Icelanders with missing segments of DNA carried by the rest the population. They matched these “knocked out” genes with their impact on the individuals carrying them. That quest has only just begun. But already it has resulted in a rich bounty.
In 2015, Stefansson and his team reported they had found rare mutations that increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, gallstones, atrial fibrillation, and thyroid disease. If researchers can find the chemical pathways the mutations affect, they will have unprecedented insights into the causes—and possible cures—of some of humanity’s worst diseases.
In the Middle Ages, scribes set down the legendary deeds of Kveldulf the Viking and the nation’s legendary explorers and families in the Sagas of the Icelanders. In the depth of winter not long ago, I ventured to Iceland to write my saga of the Icelander who would conquer the genetic code.
celand in December is a cold and forbidding place. The sun doesn’t rise until 11 a.m. By 4,
