Moreover the case study allows me to situate the iconographic and journalistic production in a ‘global’ space of interaction and affectivity. The analyses call attention to a long and morally repulsive history of colonial and intra-European usages of scientific methods and categories that worked in favour of classifying people racially and controlling reproduction of undesirable others through eugenics, forced sterilisations and medical and scientific manipulations of human beings. The intersections of the genetic discourse and the discourse of origin are not merely a picture in a passport. They are concretely embedded social practices with profound implications for human interaction. It is also strikingly represented and conflated within a culturally based ‘western’ social imaginary, which are analysed in this and in the following two case studies using journalistic and other mediated productions.
2.2 THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENETIC HOMOGENEITY
The New York Times (reprinted in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant on 9 October 2004) published an article on the Danish sperm bank Cryos International, the world’s largest sperm bank, telling the story of 10,000 pregnancies worldwide fathered by Danish college boys under the heading, ‘Spreading Viking Genes, Without Boats’
(Alvarez 2004). Before I embark on a textual discursive analysis of this newspaper article I analyse the object of the piece. The Scandinavian sperm-bank Cryos International has two websites through which it presents a discourse on genetic heritage and origin, which the newspaper article taps into. It is a discourse shared with other genetic projects such as that conducted by the medical genetic research
company deCODE116 Genetics, which bases its pharmaceutical and medical genetic research on the ‘population approach’. The ‘population approach’ has made deCODE and the company’s research on the Icelandic population famous worldwide because of the unique project of mapping the Icelandic DNA for research purposes.
Approximately half the Icelandic population participates in the project. It is based on three sets of data collected from volunteers in the projects; the genetic, medical, and the genealogical sets of data. These data are accessible because of Iceland’s short but very well recorded history. The isolation in which Iceland and its inhabitants have supposedly been kept (as an island in a very northerly location and difficult of access) is seen as the reason for the genetic homogeneity which in turn is connected to the island’s Viking sagas, containing genealogical knowledge of the forefathers on the island. Homogeneity seems to be a fact of Icelandic discourse. Similarly, on its website, Cryos International argues for a stable homogenous gene pool connected with and representing the cultural memory of Viking warriors, to which I will turn next.
2.2.1 The sperm bank of Cryos International
Cryos International has two websites with information for its clients: One for the Danish market and one for the non-Danish, primarily American, market. According to the company this is due to the difference in policies concerning sperm banking in the US and in Denmark. Traditionally in Denmark hospital officials administer medically- assisted reproduction117, whereas in the US the clients are couples or individuals who desire a child. This is changing and the Danish clients are increasingly choosing their own donor sperm. Consequently the Danish and the American-focused websites are approaching each other in visual image and message. The following presentation however is based on the old version of the American website which was available at the time when The New York Times article was featured. In this version of the
116 http://www.decode.com/.
117 In 2007 lesbian couples and single women won the right to fertility treatment and the Nordic sperm banks decided to run their businesses in Denmark as they had done for quite a while abroad. The sperm banks made information available about the sperm donors such as occupation, physique, likes and dislikes as well as baby pictures and voice recordings. This new approach was debated because the regulations which the doctors (who used to select the donor semen in connection to fertility treatment) used to abide by restricted them to consider skin, hair- and eye colour, weight and height of the donors only. The debates never questioned if in fact intelligence, musical talents or a particular liking of liquorice is hereditary (Mols 2007).
American website of Cryos International118 the viewer could scroll down the site to a link called ‘Vikings’. This part of the website provided a window into Danish heritage – into the heritage of the potential baby. Under the heading, ‘Congratulations! It’s a Viking’, it said:
You were expecting a giant guy with horns?
That is so 10th century. Today’s Vikings are an eclectic lot, like their parents. We’ve dealt with plenty of moms- and dads-to-be, from German-Sudanese couples to Malay-Australian and infinite combinations in between. Parents tell us that their new-wave Vikings still set out on voyages of discovery, often landing at local kindergartens. At Scandinavian Cryobank, we’re proud to have had more than a little to do with such developments.
Do Vikings need sturdier cribs?
It’s a good question. After all, our ancestors did have a certain reputation for robust health and brute strength. They loved the outdoors so much they took over England, Greenland, Iceland and most of northern Europe. These days, Scandinavians are known for calmer pursuits. Why, we even sponsor something called the Nobel Peace Prize.
But be warned, today’s Vikings possess an uncanny ability to wrap parents around their little fingers.119
A picture of a dark-skinned baby with big curly black hair supports the text. Despite the common references120 to the ‘blond hair and blue eyed’ Viking babies, it seems that Cryos International is trying to separate the signifier and the signified of this symbol of ‘whiteness’, the Vikings. However, the myth of the Vikings, their raids and sturdy physique is still being invoked in the campaign.
118 http://www.scandinaviancryobank.com/ accessed November 2005. The website has since been changed and the ‘Congratulations! It’s a Viking!’ page is no longer accessible. The outline of the donors’ height, weight, skin, hair and eye colour has likewise been closed to public display though the sperm bank employees’ impressions of the donors are still available:
http://ny.cryosinternational.com/our-donors/impressions.aspx.
119 Ibid.
120 These references will be analysed in depth shortly.
The website’s textual message falls in two categories; tracing back ancestry and bringing the genes into the future. Both categories draw on the conflation of genetic design and genealogy. The genes in the DNA testing and the sperm donations are linked to ‘historical’ ancestors, sagas and myths of a certain region’s peoples. It is only parts of the myths and sagas – cultural memories – which are being told, though.
Glossing over the violence and the half-truths, the receiver of the message – the potential client for instance – is left with a heroic male adventurer. The company emphasises the multi-ethnicity of the procreative outcome, while playing on the easily recognisable Viking imaginary. The ironic tone in which the Viking raids and killings are presented downplays the violence, while keeping the heroic charm of the imaginary. The mental picture invoked is of a ‘sensitive Viking’ (Kroløkke and Foss 2006). And of course the reference to the Nobel Peace Prize, which is sponsored by Denmark, but is in fact of Swedish origins, thus making the Danish sperm bank into a Scandinavian joint venture, like that of the Vikings.
Despite the brown skinned ‘Viking’ baby depicted in the website, the overwhelming majority of the donors are ‘white’ Caucasian. The reasons for using this particular Nordic sperm bank are often explained to clients in terms of a visual marker. They may have Scandinavian ancestry and want their baby to share this heritage. The Viking iconography is an imaginary of purity, not only in the genes and the heritage, but also of phenotypes, to which I will return in the next section. The whiteness, the purity and the authenticity are sought after in the discourse of DNA research. The Scandinavian discourse on genetic Viking heritage provides a slippage between the categories of genetic information, genealogies and physical appearances, which allow the Viking to stand out as an ultimate Scandinavian representation. It is, however, a representation which is reachable in ‘real life’ through the reconstruction of lost genealogy or through sperm bank donations from a Danish college student, as I discuss in detail below.