Guys hauling sail rope

Music

Campbell:  It is a chill night, with a threat of storm, as a Viking longship heads to sea.

00:06

Map Iceland

Music

Campbell:   A thousand years ago, a ship like this set out from this bay to discover the new world. The skipper then was a Viking hero named Leifur Ericsson. The skipper now is his direct descendant, Gunnar Eggertson. Gunnar built this ship as a tribute to his ancestor. Next year he will sail it to America to mark the millennium of that voyage.

00:29

Gunnar:  I thought that there's no one here in Iceland who

00:54

Gunnar on ship

has the knowledge to build a ship like this. And because of that, I started it. If I didn't do it then it was not going to be done for maybe another thousand years.

Passengers on boat singing

Singing

00:13

Campbell:  It may seem heroic folly, but in Iceland, Viking heritage is taken very seriously.  Even these artists and writers who have hired the ship for an evening cruise, can name their ancestors. They still speak the Viking language, almost unchanged over centuries. And according to Dora Isleifsdottir, they've inherited the same determination.

00:17

Dora

Dora:  The nationalistic view of Iceland is Vikings and you can go anywhere, do anything.

00:45

Long boat

Campbell:   Icelanders don't just have a sense of Viking inheritance, they carry the Vikings' genes. Almost everybody in this country is directly descended from the Norse Vikings who settled here in the

02:00

Campbell

Super:  

ERIC CAMPBELL

ninth and tenth centuries. They remained in isolation for most of the thousand years that followed. Today, this is still the most homogenous society in Europe. Everybody is related to everybody else. It is like a genetic snapshot of the last millennium.

Man walking along street

And that is propelling Iceland towards its most daring project since discovering the new world.

Kari:  The fact of the matter is that we have this genealogy, and in our company we have the genealogy of the entire nation centuries back in time.

02:15

Kari

Super:

KARI STEFANSSON

CEO Decode

And it's an absolutely miraculous, you know, instrument to use in the study of genetics of human disease.

02:28

Decode Lab

Campbell:  Kari Stefansson heads Decode - an American-Icelandic company set up to map the genes of the entire population.

02:35

The 250 staff hope to identify the genes responsible for a dozen inherited diseases. It is not just scientific research - it is big business.

02:44

The pharmaceutical giant, Hoffmann La Roche, will pay a $200 million success fee if they succeed.

02:52

Kari

Kari:  The business idea behind our company is that this knowledge can be turned into new methods to treat and prevent diseases, to alleviate pain, to diminish suffering. And I am absolutely convinced that it will.

03:00

Volcanic hot springs

Music

Campbell:  This small, volcanic island is the one place on earth where a project like this could take place.  The Vikings called it Iceland to scare off rival settlers.

03:30

Its reputation and isolation kept it free of strangers for centuries.

03:45

And in this beautiful but harsh land, with it striking features but poor soil, their ancestry became the strongest expression of who they were.

Kari:  There are no great buildings in Iceland

03:48

Kari

that are waiting to become monuments. We have absolutely no great pieces of art, no great paintings, no statutes. The only thing we had were the stories we told, the stories we wrote, you know, and the stories told from the great men of each generation.

Campbell:  The stories, written in the Sagas, are still kept in Iceland's university. The centuries old parchments hold detailed histories of each generation.

04:24

Decode is now putting these ancient records to modern use.

Tordur and Campbell at computer

Tordur:  So if we, for example, look up Kari Stefansson...

Campbell:   Your boss?

Tordur:  Yeah. And David Oddson, the Prime Minister, yes. And we can see how they are related.

04:39

Campbell:  Tordur Kristjansson has digitised the genealogy of 580,000 people. His family trees represent 85 percent of the Vikings and their descendants.

05:00

Tordur:  And if we click on this lady, for example, she was born in 1787, we get her family tree, and we can continue back in time. Now we are in 1180.

05:14

Campbell:   How far back can you go?

05:30

Tordur:  Back to the settlement of Iceland. So now what we have is the gentleman called Kettil Bjarnarson, born in 805, and he was one of the settlers of Iceland. His parents were, his father was a small king in Norway.

05:33

Decode medical lab

Campbell:   The next link in the medical chain is to trace back family illnesses, mainly through state held medical records.

05:55

Researchers will then compare them to DNA samples of 10,000 voluntary blood donors. They believe that cross-sampling will help scientists understand why disease begins and how it is passed to each generation.

06:00

Such knowledge could revolutionise the treatment of multiple sclerosis, diabetes, Alzheimer's, osteoarthritis or even schizophrenia.

Campbell to camera

The potential for medical research is staggering. It could not only unlock the secrets of diseases, it could also warn people years ahead of the dangers they might face. But the ethical implications are just as great. Could insurance companies demand this information and deny people a lifetime of protection? Could future generations be classified at birth on the basis of their genes?

06:25

Church choir

Music

06:38

Campbell:   The Church of Iceland doubts they are risks worth taking.

06:45

The minister at this rural congregation, Kristin Fridfinsson, has taken his warnings to the pulpit.

06:55

He's angry that medical records will be automatically passed to Decode unless patients ask to be excluded.

Minister at pulpit

Minister:  According to the law information about the living and the dead can be accessed without a consent agreement.  I have never heard of an ethic anywhere in this world - neither in Christianity, nor as practised by scientists that permits unlimited access to people's most secret information.

07:15

Exterior of church

Campbell:  Decode insists it will encrypt all data to ensure people's privacy is respected. Kari Steffansson acknowledges a risk of abuse, but he believes it's worth taking.

07:40

Kari

Kari:  And if we decide that we will not allow the use of this information to create knowledge for the sake of developing new methods to treat and prevent diseases, we are then basically sentencing our children and their children to medicine that is going to be of poorer quality. And to my mind, that is not elevating the standards in bioethics, it is to, you know, pull it down.

07:55

Cemetery

Campbell:  But this is not just an issue of privacy. There is also a sense that Icelanders are giving away their heritage.

08:20

In a community where ancestry is given special reference, many feel their family trees should not become commercial property.

Minister

Super:

Kristinn Fridfinsson

Minister, Church of Iceland

Minister:  We have nothing against private firms financing research, but commercial interests should not lead the road in scientific research that is based on the usage of sensitive information.

08:40

Doctor examines patient

Campbell:  General practitioner, Sigburbjorn Svensson, has decided to defy the government's orders to hand over his patients' records. He says he will only cooperate if patients volunteer to give their private details.

Svensson:  I find it very difficult, and unethical

09:00

Svensson

to give this information away to the, to a third party that has the exclusive rights to do whatever they want to, whatever research they want to. And sell the research to the highest bidder. I can't do it.

09:12

Kari

Super:

KARI STEFANSSON

CEO, Decode

Kari:  Discoveries like we are trying to do can never belong to us, they can never belong to the Icelandic population. They belong to the entire humanity. But if we want to make discoveries, we have to face the fact that they have to be financed.

09:35

Café exterior

Campbell:  Many of Iceland's youth are also worried. Dora and her friend Bjorkur plan to opt out, preventing their health records being used for research.

09:57

Dora

Dora:  I mean if data about me is in there, I'm going to be contributing to something I have no idea where it leads.

10:07

Campbell:  Bjorkur fears the effect a project centre on genetic purity could have on this small country.

10:15

Bjorkur

Bjorkur:  Society here is backwards enough.

10:22

Dora:  Yes, it's closed enough.

Bjorkur:  It's closed enough and narrow minded in that sense enough. But this is a really scary, scary thought that will contribute to even more racism and more xenophobic ideas.

10:28

View of town from ocean

Music

Campbell:  Even today, it is easy to spot outsiders. Iceland has a population of only 270,000.

10:55

Many people have such strikingly similar features that they appear to be from the same family.

But like their ancestors, this tiny community is on the brink of momentous discovery. The Prime Minister says it's time for the argument to stop.

Prime Minister:  This a scientific experience

11:15

Prime Minister

in a world class I would say. And I am sure that both for our people and the world as a whole, this will be a very special possibility for Iceland.

11:28

Campbell:   A thousand years after Vikings found America, their descendants have embarked on a brand new world of science.

11:44