| “ | The Icelanders do not have the high level of immunity that the people of the other nations do, but it has risen during the past decades thanks to the Dagrenning genetic program. | ” |
Dagrenning (Icelandic for "dawn") is a eugenic program that allows immune individuals to donate sperm and eggs to be used by non-immune parents in Iceland. Ever since Year 67, "over 50" children have annually been born as a result of the program.
Post-Rash Activity[]
Statistical Background[]
Photo of a family with children born of the Dagrenning Program. Note the differing hair colors and features.
In the year 90, the population of Iceland - which has never seen an outbreak of the Illness - contains only 7% people with immunity, while the rest of the Nordic countries has seen the non-immune members of their societies ravaged to the point that an average of 48% of survivors are immune. It is not yet known what the percentage was to begin with, and whether it varied between locations or ethnicities.
As far as the Nordic countries are concerned, the population numbers of pre-Rash times and the year 90 may provide a hint, though. As a ballpark figure, each of the four nations besides Iceland fell from 5+ million to 15,000, half of them immune. Ignoring other potential influences for the sake of the argument, this suggests a pre-Rash immunity rate in the range of 0.15% (although a number of immune individuals were possibly killed due to one factor or another and thus are not part of the 15,000) - which would make the current Icelandic rate of 7% a quite remarkable progress.
On the other hand, according to the info page
, the number of children born to the Dagrenning program per year is in the two- or low three-digit range, which seems to contradict it having such a major effect on the immunity rate.
Details of the Program[]
Again drawing from the info page / advertisement, the Dagrenning program is limited to controlled conception using donated eggs and sperm from immune persons; no modification of the donated DNA takes place. The number of donors is given as "over 10,000", spanning all Nordic nations except - for "technical and communication" reasons - Finland, which would translate to about one third of the immune population participating as donors. The low number of immune children produced would then indicate either much more reluctance on the potential recipients' part, or a rather high failure rate.
At least a part of the attempts at producing children require only artificial insemination, which should be well within the reach of available technology, so the case of rather limited demand among the recipients seems more likely. Participation is voluntary on the donor as well as the recipient side, and all activities are paid for out of government coffers, likely Iceland's.
An artistic, and comically exaggerated, rendition of the donor selection principle
Donors are said to be screened, not only to make sure that they are immune and thus serve the program's purpose of raising the immunity rate, but also to "weed out clearly unsuitable candidates". The exact criteria remain unknown, but the method of choice - interviews of the donors-to-be -, the self-imposed limitation to only remove clearly unsuitable candidates, and the fact that one third of potential donors do actually participate suggest that the requirements aren't very strict.
Reusing the same donor avoids children of a family being visibly unrelated to each other
The donors that have been picked (or randomly selected) for a given recipient are kept on record, and recipients are offered to get the same donor in subsequent donations. Whether donors' identities are revealed to recipients or the offspring, and under what conditions, is yet unknown. Considering that pre-Rash Iceland already had the necessity to keep tabs on ancestry and counteract inbreeding to a certain degree, it is likely that the Dagrenning Program interfaces with a registry that actually keep tracks of the relations of all Icelanders.
References in the comic[]
All four of Reynir's siblings were born though the program and as a result are all immune to the Rash illness while he is not. While all of his siblings are shown to have black hair, presumably because they are born from the same donor, he is the only one with red hair, matching his father's.
Pre-Rash References[]
The term is often used in connection with the breeding of Icelandic horses, and there seems to be a majority of studs outside Iceland referring to it. It is unclear how this use came about, or whether the use in the comic is actually a reference to it.