 Great, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to introduce our next speaker to you. And Professor Kiesli Belsen comes to us from the University of Iceland. Kiesli is a professor of anthropology, and he has been fascinated by two particular aspects of tuneology in Iceland. The first is the book of Icelanders, which was an amazing online tool that connected all the various pedigrees of Iceland, many of which go back to about 900 AD. And the second aspect of genealogy in Iceland that has really captured the imagination of a lot of people is decode me, and the fact that they actually tested virtually the entire population of Iceland, certainly a very, very good proportion of them. And today, Kiesli is going to talk to us about Hans Jonathan, about reconstructing the genome of a Caribbean mineral slave, and as well as that, the book of Icelanders decode me and the parallels between Iceland and Ireland and the way that we approach genealogy. So this is going to be a fascinating lecture. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big welcome to Kiesli Belsen. Thank you very much. I'm here to be invited to speak about my issues. The project that I'm talking about is part of a larger project under the umbrella of citogen, which is funded by the European Research Horizon 2020. And there are several of us here who participate in this citogen project, Identity, Citogen, Chimchi, and Nationhood in the post-genome era. So this is my theme. I'm basically talking about Iceland in one way or another. Iceland is a small country, an island, and Ireland can be used with your feet. The Republic of Ireland has 14 times the population of Iceland, I think. And the smaller you have the scale, the more easy it is maybe to flesh out some issues. And I'm speaking about genealogies, DNA, and personal names, I think. So these are the themes, naming, practices, surnames and after names and other forms of naming. The visualization of genealogies and personal genomics, you know more about that than I do. These are the genealogies, the book of Icelanders, and the issue of blackness in the North, in Central Asia, in Iceland. And at the end I would show a brief trailer from a documentary about a guy named Hans Jonathan, who was a Caribbean slave who settled in Iceland in 1802. So here's the geographical context. Iceland was settled by Norths and the people from the cryptids in the Scottish Isles and in Ireland. And DNA research shows that the main TNA is typically from Western Norway, when the Litho-Country or the female contribution is typically or heavily from Ireland and the British Isles. The Norths went westward in the 9th or 10th century to Iceland and went to Greenland and down south to Lansometer, at least, and there was some speculation early last century that the Norths had mixed with the Inuit. And so the Icelandic genome could be tricky-wide if there's any evidence to this. I organized a project with a biological anthropologist to study the Inuit genome, although I'm speaking about Iceland, and I'm squeezing in Inuit because it's interesting in several ways. And this is a small community-hentered space in Brunabit and Caracas with only 1,500 inhabitants. And it's somewhere here, part of the Canadian state. And in order to be able to do our biological genetic study, we had to negotiate with elders in the Inuit community because they are the informer power, and we had to present what we wanted to do and again results afterwards. And this was quite interesting, of course, with respect to the protocols, the ethics of research. But here is my colleague, Adnan Elkaton, who works both in Articulture Ethics in Reykjavík and in my department in anthropology. And he's presenting the results to the representatives of the elders in this tiny community. And it was interesting for many reasons. For one thing, the Inuit decreased that there was not a chance of evidence to the statement that there was a Norse mixture. They would cure Inuit, but nothing to do with Scandinavia. And secondly, it was interesting how difficult it was to explain DNA and genetics to these people who had probably no formal schooling after the age of 10. And here's my colleague trying to explain to them. But it was an interesting communication. And we learned, the anthropologists, that the Inuit thought of relationship very differently from the Western or Euro-American science point of view. For the Inuit, naming is the avenue into relationship. Because when children are born, they receive a name from their parents and their kin and neighbors and friends. And these sets of names that the individual requires form in the Inuit understanding the personality of the child and the life course. So it's an interesting contrast. In three months, we should take it for a fact that relationship and kinship is totally based on DNA. For these people, kin and relationships is very different. Also, we might take a look into history. This is a medieval representation of kinship, of a family. And it's a beautiful painting from the 15th or 16th century. It shows a lineage. The roots of the tree are in the soil. And then the branches spread out with different ancestors. And the tree is a common metaphor. You see it on the whole way. Family is tree. But we don't necessarily have to look at relationships or kinship in terms of tree. There are other metaphors historically. And also from anthropology, we know that for a fact. And interestingly, in the middle ages, there was a raging theological debate about trees like that. Because some of the theological experts thought it was degrading to have the roots in the messy, murky soil. And also they inverted the tree to make the roots closer to the heavens and the gods. This is a modern construction of a genealogical tree. It's an asthma tree for an Icelandic family, for an Icelandic lineage. And then the generations fan out. And the dark spots are the persons with asthma, diagnosed with asthma. And what the eco does is a look for the genetic signatures of asthma. But the image itself is appealing. And it happens to have been a kind of informal local for eco-genetics. Lots of Icelanders wear t-shirts with this image on. Now, person of genomics. He was the launching of the Project 23MB in New York City in 2008, I think. You know a lot about these projects. And I won't dwell on it. But this was called the Street Party in the New York Times. So it made me reflect on sticking images and stuff like that from years ago. And deco-genetics in Rayfield had a similar project called Decode Me. And in fact it was the first project of the kind. It's not an operation anymore, but it was quite an interesting project. And of course I signed that as an anthropologist. And I was promised two things. Information about, I don't know, 40 or 50 conditions and diseases. The probability of getting asthma for instance. And also an opportunity to look into my ancestry and the death of my family tree. And it was quite interesting in several ways. This was 10 years ago. And for instance I have no doubt about first reaction. And a chance of Alzheimer's less than the other. And of course this is based on reference populations and available medical studies at the time. And then there's ancestry. My ancestry is birthed in foremost European. But interestingly, second the Southwest Asian. And no one has been able to explain this to me. Not even the experts who created this database. So it's still a mystery in the family. And this is the European aspect. The second connection, strongest connection, getting the reference populations. Here's your gradient. Orc base, Ireland. Not surprising. The second within Europe, etc. And this is my Southwest Asian past, whatever it is. I don't think it means very much. I would like to say more about the sort of proof of Icelanders. Icelanders have been genealogical enthusiasts from the settlement in the 9th century. And there is a rich literature on families. And we have lots of experts in genealogies like you have here. But in 2003, Deepo Genetics lined up with software company, Frisk Software, to digitalize all genealogical records in Iceland from the beginning. And it's taken years and dozens of people to track down the archives and to add new members to the database. And I followed the launching because I found this an interesting experiment. It's the first of its kind, a digitalization of genealogies for an entire country. And when it opened in 2003, the reception was phenomenal. 18,000 people subscribed or opened in a few days. Then it slacked off, but remained fairly constant for once. And still, it's a constant traffic through the system. And most Icelanders have subscribed. If you have an Icelandic Social Security number, you're entitled to join. And it's free. And so practically everyone can join and most Icelanders do. And it was interesting to follow the launching. And Deepo offered people a chance to comment on it was not just information on trees, but also something on your personal life, family, spouses and stuff. And it was interesting to follow this process of communicating with the public. And Deepo's graciously offered me an opportunity to read some of the responses from the public and not show you a few. Gosh, this is really exciting. I got thinking of this when I was having my hair dyed after hair curses. On both sides were women saying, listen, my son-in-law turns out to be your husband, husband, et cetera. Certainly all cocktail parties had been turned into family reunion. I don't know this new man. And in any case, I'm not married to him. But if this indeed were the case, by all means, don't tell anyone about it. My husband was listed as my partner. When I drink from him, the name of his former girlfriend, since college days, appeared. The name we are married, and the only thing that my husband and his former girlfriend having come up is a dog that was executed in 1998. So I don't see any point in visiting this woman here. I registered for the book of Icelanders. I'm hoping for the records. I have no parents. I'm not at home. It would be fun to know what went wrong. So I explored my ancestry and my background. I was aware of a few generations, but this opened a whole new avenue. And I can trace my origins back to the 1400s and possibly further back if I go into the archives. And it's an amazing tool. And here's my mother and her village, and here's my father. And you see this is my grandmother. She disappears into loneliness, and it's because she was fair-wiss. And her background is not in the database. But I can also check through the book of Icelanders with any Icelander who's ever been around. And it's amazing that lots of Icelanders use that tool to explore people going to meetings, for instance, people log in and check how is this person across the table related to me. And you will get in a split second exactly. Usually it's a seventh or eighth generation, because this is a small population. And they have been bottlenecks in history because of eruptions and flakes. So most people descend from the same ancestors. Anyway, this is a kind of site issue. The book of Icelanders and the tools I've talked about so far allow you to explore your connection with Scandinavians. I mean, Icelanders who have roots in Iceland. But what about people who come from abroad? What about blacks? This used to be a thoroughly white population. There's the cover of a new biography of the first black person who settled in Iceland in 1802. He was born in Seckry in the Danish West Indies. And his mother was from Ghana, or presumably Iran, in West Africa. And at the age of seven, the boy was a slave, like his house slave, his mother. And he was sent to Copenhagen with his owners, the Zimmermann family, all thousands of slaves and plantations. And the boy escaped. He was rebellious and clever and spoke seven languages apparently. And he escaped from Copenhagen to Iceland because he was not satisfied with the legal verdict in a famous court case that sentenced him to remain a slave. This is a plantation on Seckry where he was born. We have the records of baptism. And we also have the dozens of pages from the famous court case in Copenhagen, which is part of the important material that I was able to draw upon. And this is a place where Hans John Anton settled in 1802. He arrived from the Danish trading store there in East Iceland. And the building where he worked, part of it, stands here under a beautiful mountain. And here he spent the rest of his life. He married an Icelandic woman in the neighborhood. And they had two kids. And their descendants are now 1,000. Mostly in Iceland, but quite a few abroad as well. This is one of his grandson, Björn Eriksson. And he said to have been the skittish image of the old man. But the old man died before the birth of my photography. And there's no drawing, only a few handwritten documents by him. So he looked like this one in phenotype. Now here I'm checking through the book of Icelanders I told you about earlier. I've been checking my relationship to the descendants of Hans John Anton by asking the machine to tell me how I relate to Catherine Antonia Stokic, who was the wife of Hans John Anton born in 1798. And this is the result. I'm here, and here's the guy Björn Eriksson whose picture you saw. And his grandmother. So this is a typical Icelandic connection. We're all related to the 7th or 8th link. Here we have a descendant of the local inhabitants of Dufravo, the place I showed you, for a kind of festival in the beginning of a new century, a new millennium in 1900. And no doubt some of Hans John Anton's descendants are there. The interesting thing is that Hans John Anton didn't experience any racism as far as we know. He is remembered as an honorable creator and playing fair and respected for preaching against alcohol and teaching people navigation and stuff like that. So Icelanders, the local inhabitants probably saw him as somewhat different from themselves, but maybe just like a farmer from the next community. Things changed in the early 20th century because of growing independence movement which emphasized the purity of the Icelandic population, which emphasized the origin of Icelanders, the Viking heritage and the fact that 13th, 12th, 13th century Icelanders have created world heritage, namely the sagas, and how could we possibly flag the black blood that came in maybe in the 19th century. And some of the descendants of Hans John Anton say they would be quiet about their origin because black was not supposed to be around. And here's the family trees in Stonatan and Katin, and these are the African roots, African Europe, which we don't know much about. There's a debate about the paternity of the guy, but I elaborate on that in a book, and here are his descendants and way on about some people. Here's a woman, Roberta Eriksson-Tolés, who came to Iceland in 1985 with her father. They had heard that they had an ancestor who lived in Iceland and they came to explore the roots. And they didn't learn much during the visit to the community because few people spoke English at the time, but they went to the archives in Reykjaví and discovered that the ancestor, Hans John Anton, was a black guy called Amulato, mixed white and black, and that he had been enslaved, the son of a house slave dissenting from West Africa. So it was by discovery for this lady, and she happened to be teaching African American history in Boston, and she was stunned to learn that there was an African, Caribbean element in her genome. Now, this is the story of the mapping of Hans John Anton's genome. I won't say much about it, but in a few weeks one of the major journals in modern genetics published a major paper on the reconstruction of the genome of Hans John Anton, and it's groundbreaking in several respects. For one thing, in this case you don't have any biological samples to draw up on directly from Hans John Anton. We know roughly where his graveyard is, but we don't know the grave site, and we don't know for nothing. But sessions of his descendants in Iceland are in the database, the database of eco-genetics, and the black signature stands out in the records because there was no traffic and no black immigration before Hans John Anton. So by cooling the analysis of the genome of these descendants, they're able, literally, to reconstruct out of Hans John Anton's genome. So that's kind of fun. Secondly, his project is aiming to establish roughly where in Africa Hans John Anton's mother came from. The historical records would tell us roughly, the Danish trade vessels saved from the Gold Coast in Africa, but the slaves would arrive to the coast from different parts of Africa, Western Africa. So ideally this project would establish better than the historical records where Hans John Anton's mother came from and her ancestors. I can't tell you more about the literature and its results. I can only say that I think it will be groundbreaking and exciting to see how genetics and genealogy and archival work might fill in the picture. Interestingly, all of Hans John Anton's descendants, Ingar Kintuson, who is one of the directors of Nintendo in the United States, decided to sign back for 23andMe. He was born and raised in Iceland, but he lives in Seattle, and both of his parents are Icelandic. So he was exploring his own roots. He knew about the African roots. So 0.7% of his genome are sub-Saharan, and here are the reference populations. I think he had this done a couple of years ago, and another is his 23andMe. It's a bit blurred, but you know how this works, and it's interesting to see how Icelanders do this test to explore the black heritage. So I won't say much more here. I hope I haven't taken too much of your time, and now we have a few minutes on a new documentary trailer about the life of Hans John Anton, the visit of some of the U.B. saithans to St. Croix in the famous, now American West Indies. Let's see how it goes. Any favorite lights? So that's all I would say about that test. I'm going to tell you about some of the best saithos of Iceland. What do you say? I don't know. What about Iceland? What about Iceland? I don't know. And there are calls for reconciliation. And in humanity, you can imagine, here's now leading up to Dallas from Denmark to the United States, and leading up to 2017 is which our people can pursue reconciliation and put this... Excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, give us a hand. Thank you. Now we have time for some questions, and I'm just going to put up the last slide that we have there. And in fact, that was the... Yes, let's go to these slides here. And I'd like to go back to the one that you have about the book, which is... I'm reading it at the moment. It's a very well-written book. Very interesting reads. I certainly recommend it to anybody, the man who stole himself. And it's going to be an incredible segment for us in the genealogy community. I think the work that you're doing is... Sorry, groundbreaking. I'm going to stand a bit over here just in case it's interfering with that microphone. But questions for Casey. Let's take care. Curious about any wine DNA testing done to find the origin of the father of the... Thank you. It's a good question. I've been puzzled by the question of the father. The records say Emilia Regina, his mother, was born on the Constitution Hill, the property of Heinrich Schimmermann. The father is not reported, but rumor has it that it was the secretary. So this is the record. People have been puzzled for years what it means. But I'm collaborating with people at DeepCode on genetic testing in order to try to say something meaningful about paternity issues. I discussed three hypotheses in the book. Two have been kind of rumors for decades. But I offer my third hypothesis on the basis of the only written evidence we have, namely the baptism record. And I managed to get three DNA samples in Copenhagen from two from one of the candidates and one from the second. I was negotiating having a sample from one of the Schimmermanns, which is, I think, the second most likely candidate. And after some discussions, they refused to collaborate, which was very sad. But it's partly because the Schimmermann family has been enmeshed in debates on slavery. Thousands of slaves. And they were a bit of the fact that people are now requesting some kind of reimbursement, what you would call it, some payment of support as the representative Shirley Morehead indicated in the film. So sadly the Schimmermanns collectively decided to back out after the last minute having samples from the families, apparently from the families of the three candidates would be wonderful. But there may be an opportunity later on, I hope. Thank you. And what do you think are the implications of the work that you're doing for the process of reparation? I think a biography of an enslaved person from the Danish colonies is important from the current debates about compensations and responsibility. And I think the Danish Queen is going to St. Croix next month. And lots of people are waiting to hear what she will say. No Danish leader has formally offered an apology for one of the major slave trains in history. One of the... One of them is his music. So, yeah. No Danish leader has offered an apology up to now, despite heavy pressures. And I'd be glad to see what the Queen has to say. I respect the lady, and she has her integrity, and I would be surprised if she doesn't use the opportunity to finally apologize for the ugliness of Danish slavery. Sorry about the problem with the microphone. I think there's interference with the difference of sound systems in the hall. Yeah, I'm sure the work that you're doing is going to open up a whole new discussion about reparations and slavery, and will bring a whole new perspective to discussion. Now, any other questions? We have a few here. I'm going to bring this down to Roberta, and then I'm going to bring it back to you, Gisle. Will the DNA results or his descendants be in any of the public databases, like the family tree DNA, YDNA, or the simple database for comparison? Thank you. I really don't know how these things work, but I imagine if people like this high standard INCRAP, subscribe to these services and record their ancestors, I imagine this will somehow be in the global records in the long run. And that's one of the interesting things with alternative is the fact that these databases are linked together and we can explore our roots back and forth. But I don't have a good sense of how I followed these things 12 years ago, when 23andee and people restarted, but I don't really have a good sense of how things are going now in terms of sharing and recording. Okay, other questions? Debbie? There are lots of things. The important point is that racism in the Danish empire only arrived with the Pantaisians. So it's the slave trade and the Pantaisian slavery. This was the birthplace of slavery in Denmark. And the same with the UK, I guess. Historians established this. Racism in the form we know today didn't exist in Europe before the slave trade. But, of course, there were ideas about people with different color or head shapes or whatever prior to this, even in ancient Greece. But it was not the racism that we know now, the skin color, etc. You're right. Eugenic movements in the early 20th century had a lot of impact in Iceland as well. There was a strong movement and Nazi party just before the war, etc. Lots of Icelandic intellectuals subscribed to the racism that German physical anthropologists had advocated in the 1930s and 40s. But the rhetoric on the race in Denmark with slavery seemed to have arrived relatively late to Iceland. So when Nazi immigrants came in 1802, Icelanders had not been subjected to this kind of thinking. But over the next decades, things will change. Now again, it's radically different. Icelanders debate about immigration and color and the rest of it, like the rest of Europe, they also celebrate diversity and color. I was just thinking about the statistics of how we're going to reconstruct this genome. I'm sure you can't say too much about it, but if his father was white... Sorry. If his father was a Shimmerman, who was a white Danish chap, will the Shimmermans have lots of descendants in Iceland and you'll be able to reconstruct the European part of Hans Jonathan's genome? Whereas if he just had two sons and they passed on his DNA, you're not going to get 100% of his African DNA. You're going to get maybe up to 75% of it. I'm not sure. I don't know if you can say anything about that. I guess the establishing who the father was is interesting on its own for the history and for the descendants. Finally, this is our man. But I really can't comment on the details of the calculations. It's not my field. In any case, it's still technical for me. Even though I had the figures, I wouldn't be able to make sense of them. Any other questions for Gisle? Okay. Thank you. Thank you.