Former French president Jacques Chirac, in his farewell speech, declared: “A nation is a family.” Chirac was speaking figuratively, but Iceland really is a family. Geneticists have found that everyone in the country is related to everyone else, going back seven or eight generations. Icelanders can go to a website and find out how closely they are related to a colleague, a friend—or that cutie they slept with last night. One woman told me how unnerving this can be. “You’ve slept with this guy you’ve just met and then the next day you’re at a family reunion, and there he is in the corner eating
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