Nordic theory - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Nordic race is one of the racial subcategories into which the Caucasian race

Caucasian race

The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...

was divided by anthropologists in the first half of the 20th century. The debates about this topic are today considered ideological rather than scientific.

Nordicism (also "Nordic theory") is an ideology of racial supremacy which claims that a Nordic race within the greater Caucasian race, or Norther Germanic peoples

Germanic peoples

The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...

(i.e. Northern Germans

Northern Germany

- Geography :The key terrain features of North Germany are the marshes along the coastline of the North Sea and Baltic Sea, and the geest and heaths inland. Also prominent are the low hills of the Baltic Uplands, the ground moraines, end moraines, sandur, glacial valleys, bogs, and Luch...

, Flemish, Danes, Dutch, Norwegians, Icelandic, Faroe Islanders, English, Swedes), constitute a master race
Master race
Master race was a phrase and concept originating in the slave-holding Southern US. The later phrase Herrenvolk , interpreted as 'master race', was a concept in Nazi ideology in which the Nordic peoples, one of the branches of what in the late-19th and early-20th century was called the Aryan race,...

. Some authors, such as Madison Grant

Madison Grant

Madison Grant was an American lawyer, historian and physical anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...

, also included Balts, Celts and Slavs

Slavic peoples

The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...

from northern Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

to be part of Nordic race as well. This ideology was mainly prevalent in the late-19th and early 20th centuries in Western Europe

Western Europe

Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...

and North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

and achieved mainstream espousal in the Third Reich.
The idea of a "pure" Nordic race having existed is thoroughly discredited by biologists and anthropologists, however the rise and spread of the Nordic or Germanic people is closely linked to the male lineages represented by Haplogroup I1

Haplogroup I1 (Y-DNA)

In human genetics, Haplogroup I1 is a Y chromosome haplogroup occurring at greatest frequency in Scandinavia, associated with the mutations identified as M253, M307, P30, and P40. These are known as single nucleotide polymorphisms . It is a subclade of Haplogroup I. Before a reclassification in...

, Haplogroup R1b, and Haplogroup R1a.

Physical traits

American economist William Z. Ripley

William Z. Ripley

William Zebina Ripley was an American economist, lecturer at Columbia University, professor of economics at MIT, professor of political economics at Harvard University, and racial theorist...

's tried to define scientifically

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

the Nordic race in his book The Races of Europe
The Races of Europe (Ripley)
William Z. Ripley published The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study in 1899, which grew out of a series of lectures he gave at the Lowell Institute at Columbia in 1896. Ripley believed that race was critical to understanding human history, though his work afforded environmental and non-biological...

(1899). He created a tripartite model that was later popularised by Madison Grant

Madison Grant

Madison Grant was an American lawyer, historian and physical anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...

. It divided European

European ethnic groups

The ethnic groups in Europe are the various ethnic groups that reside in the nations of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....

s into three main subcategories: Teutonic (teutonisch), Alpine

Alpine race

The Alpine race is an historical racial classification or sub-race of humans, considered a branch of the Caucasian race. The term is not commonly used today, but was popular in the early 20th century.-History:...

and Mediterranean

Mediterranean race

The Mediterranean race was one of the three sub-categories into which the Caucasian race and the people of Europe were divided by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, following the publication of William Z. Ripley's book The Races of Europe...

. The Teutonic race resided in Scandinavia, north Germany, Baltic

Baltic states

The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...

states and East Prussia

East Prussia

East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...

, north Poland

Poland

, north Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, in Benelux

Benelux

The Benelux is an economic union in Western Europe comprising three neighbouring countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. These countries are located in northwestern Europe between France and Germany...

countries, Britain

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, parts of Central

Central Europe

Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

and Southern Europe

Southern Europe

The term Southern Europe, at its most general definition, is used to mean "all countries in the south of Europe". However, the concept, at different times, has had different meanings, providing additional political, linguistic and cultural context to the definition in addition to the typical...

and was typified by "very light" hair

Blond

Blond or blonde or fair-hair is a hair color characterized by low levels of the dark pigment eumelanin. The resultant visible hue depends on various factors, but always has some sort of yellowish color...

, blue eyes, tall stature

Human height

Human height is the distance from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head in a human body standing erect.When populations share genetic background and environmental factors, average height is frequently characteristic within the group...

and a narrow, aquiline nose. Georges Vacher de Lapouge

Georges Vacher de Lapouge

Georges Vacher de Lapouge was a French anthropologist and a theoretician of eugenics and racialism.- Biography :...

had called this race "Homo Europaeus", while Joseph Deniker

Joseph Deniker

Joseph Deniker was a French naturalist and anthropologist, known primarily for his attempts to develop highly-detailed maps of race in Europe.- Life :...

had used the term "Nordic".

European Racial Types according to Ripley
	Head Cephalic index Cephalic index is the ratio of the maximum width of the head multiplied by 100 divided by its maximum length ....	Face	Hair	Eyes Eye color Eye color is a polygenic phenotypic character and is determined by two distinct factors: the pigmentation of the eye's iris and the frequency-dependence of the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma of the iris....	Stature	Nose	Synonyms
Alpine (Celtic) Alpine race The Alpine race is an historical racial classification or sub-race of humans, considered a branch of the Caucasian race. The term is not commonly used today, but was popular in the early 20th century.-History:...	Round	Broad	Light chestnut	Hazelgray	Medium, stocky	Variable; rather broad; heavy	Occidental (Deniker), Homo Alpinus (Lapouge)
Mediterranean Mediterranean race The Mediterranean race was one of the three sub-categories into which the Caucasian race and the people of Europe were divided by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, following the publication of William Z. Ripley's book The Races of Europe...	Long	Long	Dark brown or black	Dark	Medium, slender	Rather broad
Teutonic	Long	Long	Very light	Blue	Tall	Narrow; aquiline	Nordic (Deniker), Homo Europaeus (Lapouge)

Madison Grant

Madison Grant was an American lawyer, historian and physical anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...

, in his book The Passing of the Great Race
The Passing of the Great Race
The Passing of The Great Race; or, The racial basis of European history was an influential book of scientific racism written by the American eugenicist, lawyer, and amateur anthropologist Madison Grant in 1916. The book was largely ignored when it first appeared but went through several revisions...

, defined the "Nordic" or "Baltic" type as "long skulled, very tall, fair skinned, with blond or brown hair and light colored eyes. The Nordics inhabit the countries around the North and Baltic Seas and include not only the great Scandinavian and Teutonic groups, but also other early peoples who first appear in southern Europe and in Asia as representatives of Aryan language and culture."

While the concept of Nordic race became intertwined with a northern and northeastern European cultural identity, the Alpine race was thought to predominate in central/Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

through to Turkey and the Eurasian steppe

Steppe

In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...

s of Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

and Southern Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

and was said to be characterized by short stature, dark hair, dark eyes, narrower shoulders, a darker complexion and comparatively round head. The Mediterranean race was thought to be prevalent in Southern Europe

Southern Europe

, the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

, North Africa

North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...

as well as in Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

and was said to be characterised by dark hair, dark eyes, aquiline nose, swarthy

Olive skin

Olive skin describes a skin color range of some indigenous individuals who are from the Mediterranean and some other parts of Europe, Middle East and regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. It may often be skin type 3 and 4 on the Fitzpatrick scale. However, this scale measures...

complexion

Complexion

Complexion refers to the natural color, texture, and appearance of the skin, especially that of the face.-History:The word "complexion" is derived from the Late Latin complexi, which initially referred in general terms to a combination of things, and later in physiological terms, to the balance of...

, moderate-to-short stature, and moderate or long skull.

Attitudes in ancient Europe

These categories expanded more ancient commentaries on the differences between northern and southern Europeans. Most ancient writers were from the Southern European civilisations, and generally took the view that northerners were barbarian

Barbarian

Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...

s.

Pale skin and light hair were described as signs of barbarism by Polemon of Laodicea in his book Physiognomica. Pseudo-Aristotle

Pseudo-Aristotle

Pseudo-Aristotle is a general cognomen for authors of philosophical or medical treatises who attributed their work to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, or whose work was later attributed to him by others....

noted differences between Greeks

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

and the people of the north, believing that Greek superiority was visible in their medium skin tone, as opposed to pale northerners and dark southerners and Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

ns. He claimed that blue eyes were a sign of a cowardly nature, and that they indicated poor eyesight.

Despite this, Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....

was often depicted with blonde hair

Blond

, as were deities associated with the sun.
Likewise, the Roman historian Tacitus

Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...

idealized the Germanic tribes (which he considered autochthonous

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

to their land) for qualities such as superior warlike ardor and chastity, in contrast to the Romans of his day - though his portrait is not unmixed - as he also portrays them as incurably lazy and addicted to gambling.

Many Romans believed that fair features were beautiful. Wealthy Romans paid for blond and red wigs made from the hair of captured Germanics or Celts.

Origins of Nordicism

During the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin were regularly portrayed in literature as signs of beauty and were associated with noble moral qualities. This imagery was largely aesthetic. It was not typically theorised in terms of racial difference, drawing instead on traditional symbolism of light as opposed to darkness.

From the 17th century onwards, as Northern European countries became more powerful, Northern peoples began to adapt such aesthetic traditions into arguments for their own superiority. Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

proposed a clear distinction between "white" Europeans and "swarthy" Europeans, stating that immigration to the newly-born United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

should favour the "white" Saxons and Englishmen

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

rather than the "swarthy" Germans

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

(except for the German Saxons), Italians

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

ns, Spaniards

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

and Swedes

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

. Franklin believed the white Europeans to be more "lovely", at least to his taste.

By the early-19th century these ideas were attached to emerging theories of racial hierarchy. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...

attributed civilisational primacy to the "white races" who gained their sensitivity and intelligence by refinement in the rigorous north:

"The highest civilisation and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmans, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilisation."

Influence of Aryanism

Such arguments became especially significant when allied to the theory of Aryanism

Aryan race

The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...

in the mid-19th century. This theory held that native speakers of the Indo-European languages

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

("Aryans

Aryan race

") are an innately superior branch of humanity, responsible for most of its greatest achievements.

Its principal proponent was Arthur de Gobineau

Arthur de Gobineau

Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races...

in his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855). Though Gobineau did not equate Nordic peoples with Aryans, he argued that Germanic people were the best modern representatives of the Aryan race. Adapting the comments of Tacitus

Tacitus

and other Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

writers, he argued that "pure" Northerners regenerated Europe after the Roman empire declined due to racial "dilution" of its leadership.

By the 1880s a number of linguists and anthropologists argued that the Aryans themselves had originated somewhere in northern Europe. Theodor Poesche proposed that the Aryans originated in the north in Rokitno Poland, but it was Karl Penka who popularized the idea that the Aryans had emerged in Scandinavia, and could be identified by the distinctive Nordic characteristics of blond hair and blue eyes.
The distinguished biologist Thomas Henry Huxley agreed with him, coining the term "Xanthochroi" to refer to fair-skinned Europeans, as opposed to darker Mediterranean peoples, whom Huxley called "Melanochroi

Mediterranean race

". It was Huxley who also concluded that the Melanochroi (Peoples of the Mediterranean race), who he described as "dark whites", are of a mixture of the Xanthochroi and Australioids.

This distinction was repeated by Charles Morris

Charles Morris (American writer)

Charles Morris was an American journalist, novelist and author of popular historical textbooks.He was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of Samuel Pearson Morris and Margaret Burns. After studying locally he worked as a teacher in Chester, but in 1856 moved to Philadelphia where he became...

in his book The Aryan Race (1888), which argued that the original Aryans could be identified by their blond hair and other Nordic features, such as dolichocephaly

Cephalic index

Cephalic index is the ratio of the maximum width of the head multiplied by 100 divided by its maximum length ....

(long skull). The argument was given extra impetus by the French anthropologist Vacher de Lapouge in his book L’Aryen, in which he argued that the "dolichocephalic-blond" peoples were natural leaders, destined to rule over more brachiocephalic (short-skulled) peoples.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

also referred in his writings to "blond beasts": amoral adventurers who were supposed to be the progenitors of creative cultures. In On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), he wrote, "In Latin malus ... could indicate the vulgar man as the dark one, especially as the black-haired one, as the pre-Aryan dweller of the Italian soil which distinguished itself most clearly through his colour from the blonds who became their masters, namely the Aryan conquering race."

20th century

By 1902 the German archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna

Gustaf Kossinna

Gustaf Kossinna was a linguist and professor of German archaeology at the University of Berlin...

claimed to have identified the original Aryans (Proto-Indo-Europeans

Proto-Indo-Europeans

The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language , a reconstructed prehistoric language of Eurasia.Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics...

) with the north German Corded Ware culture

Corded Ware culture

The Corded Ware culture , alternatively characterized as the Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture, is an enormous European archaeological horizon that begins in the late Neolithic , flourishes through the Copper Age and culminates in the early Bronze Age.Corded Ware culture is associated with...

, an argument that gained in currency over the following two decades. He placed the Indo-European Urheimat in Schleswig-Holstein

Schleswig-Holstein

Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the sixteen states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig...

, arguing that they had expanded across Europe from there. By the early 20th century this theory was well established, though far from universally accepted. Sociologists were soon using the concept of a "blond race" to model the migrations of the supposedly more entrepreneurial and innovative components of European populations. As late as 1939 Carleton Coon

Carleton S. Coon

Carleton Stevens Coon, was an American physical anthropologist, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, lecturer and professor at Harvard, and president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.-Biography:Carleton Coon was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts to a...

wrote that "The Poles who came to the United States during the 19th century, and the early decades of the 20th, did not represent a cross-section of the Polish population, but a taller, blonder, longer-headed group than the Poles as a whole." The "high brow"/"low brow" distinction, derived from such theories, also became enshrined in language.

The term "Nordic" itself was initially proposed as a racial group by the Russian born French anthropologist Joseph Deniker

Joseph Deniker

Joseph Deniker was a French naturalist and anthropologist, known primarily for his attempts to develop highly-detailed maps of race in Europe.- Life :...

in 1899. Deniker's use of Nordique was meant to simply translate as "Northern", and his idea of what it stood for was more akin to an "ethnic group" (another term that he coined) than a biological "race".

He defined nordique by a set of physical characteristics: The concurrence of fair, somewhat wavy hair, light eyes, reddish skin, tall stature and a dolichocephalic skull. Of six 'caucasian' groups Deniker accommodated four into secondary ethnic groups, all of which he considered intermediate to the Nordic: Northwestern, Sub-Nordic, Vistula and Sub-Adriatic, respectively.

It was the already mentioned work of sociologist/economist William Z. Ripley

William Z. Ripley

William Zebina Ripley was an American economist, lecturer at Columbia University, professor of economics at MIT, professor of political economics at Harvard University, and racial theorist...

which popularized the idea of three biological European races. Ripley borrowed Deniker's terminology of Nordic (he had previously used the term "Teuton"); his division of the European races relied on a variety of anthropometric

Anthropometry

Anthropometry refers to the measurement of the human individual...

measurements, but focused especially on their cephalic index and stature.

Compared to Deniker, Ripley advocated a simplified racial view and proposed a single Teutonic race linked to geographic areas where Nordic-like characteristics predominate, and contrasted these areas to the boundaries of two other types, Alpine and Mediterranean, thus reducing the 'caucasoid branch of humanity' to three distinct groups.

By the early 20th century, Ripley's tripartite Nordic/Alpine/Mediterranean model was well established. Most nineteenth-century race-theorists like Arthur de Gobineau

Arthur de Gobineau

, Otto Ammon

Otto Ammon

Otto Georg Ammon was a German anthropologist. Ammon was an engineer from 1863 to 1868. In 1883 he led a geographical and geological exploration of Roman roads. In 1887 he conducted anthropological research and from 1887 onwards he was a member of the Ancient Karlsruher Association and the Natural...

, Georges Vacher de Lapouge

Georges Vacher de Lapouge

Georges Vacher de Lapouge was a French anthropologist and a theoretician of eugenics and racialism.- Biography :...

, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a British-born German author of books on political philosophy, natural science and the German composer Richard Wagner. He later became a German citizen. Chamberlain married Wagner's daughter, Eva, some years after Wagner's death...

preferred to speak of "Aryans," "Teutons," and "Indo-Europeans" instead of "Nordic Race". The British German racialist Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Houston Stewart Chamberlain

considered the Nordic race to be made up of Celtic and Germanic peoples

Germanic peoples

, as well as some Slavs

Slavic peoples

. Chamberlain called those people Celt-Germanic peoples, and his ideas would influence Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

's Nazi ideology.

Only in the 1920s did a strong partiality for "Nordic" begin to reveal itself, and for a while the term was used almost interchangeably with Aryan

Aryan race

. Later, however, Nordic would not be co-terminous with Aryan

Aryan race

, Indo-European

Caucasian race

The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...

or Germanic.
For example, the later Nazi minister for Food, Richard Walther Darré, who had developed a concept of the German peasantry as Nordic race, used the term 'Aryan' to refer to the tribes of the Iranian plains.

The notion of a distinct northern European race was also rejected by several anthropologists on craniometric grounds. Rudolf Virchow

Rudolf Virchow

Rudolph Carl Virchow was a German doctor, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician, known for his advancement of public health...

attacked the claim following a study of craniometry, which gave surprising results according to contemporary scientific racist

Scientific racism

Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...

theories on the "Aryan race

Aryan race

." During the 1885 Anthropology Congress in Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe

The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

, Virchow denounced the "Nordic mysticism," while Josef Kollmann, a collaborator of Virchow, stated that the people of Europe, be they German, Italian, English or French, belonged to a "mixture of various races," furthermore declaring that the "results of craniology" led to "struggle against any theory concerning the superiority of this or that European race".

Coon (1939)

Carleton Coon

Carleton S. Coon

in his book of 1939 The Races of Europe
The Races of Europe (Coon)
The Races of Europe is a popular work of physical anthropology by Carleton S. Coon.-History:In 1933, the Harvard anthropologist Carleton S. Coon was invited to write a new edition of William Z. Ripley's 1899 The Races of Europe, which Coon dedicated to Ripley.Coon's entirely rewritten version of...

subdivided the Nordic race into three main types, "Corded", "Danubian" and "Keltic", besides
a "Neo-Danubian" type and a variety of
Nordic types altered by Upper Palaeolithic or Alpine admixture.
"Exotic Nordics" are morphologically Nordic types that occur in places distant from the northwestern European center of Nordic concentration.

Coon takes the Nordics to be a partially depigmented branch of the greater Mediterranean

Mediterranean race

racial stock. He suggests that the Nordic type emerged as a result of a mixture of "the Danubian Mediterranean strain with the later Corded element". Hence his two main Nordic types show Corded and Danubian predominance, respectively .
The third "Keltic" or "Hallstatt

Hallstatt culture

The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture from the 8th to 6th centuries BC , developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century BC and followed in much of Central Europe by the La Tène culture.By the 6th century BC, the Hallstatt culture extended for some...

" type, Coon takes to have emerged in the European Iron Age, in Central Europe, where it was subsequently mostly replaced, but "found a refuge in Sweden and in the eastern valleys of southern Norway."

Coon further recognizes the following terminology of earlier authors:

Fenno-Nordic, "a hypothetical eastern branch of the Nordic race"
Noric, "a blond, Dinaricized Nordic"
Osterdal type, "the classic Iron Age Nordic, as found today in the eastern valleys of Norway"
Sub-Nordic, "a racial group which would fall partly in the East Baltic and partly in the Neo-Danubian categories"
Trønderlagen type or Trønder type, "a variety of Nordic with an excessive Corded element and Upper Palaeolithic mixture"
Anglo-Saxon type, "a sub-type of Nordic which contains unreduced Upper Palaeolithic mixture"

Depigmentation Theory

Coon's (1939) theory that the Nordic race was a depigmentated variation of the greater Mediterranean

Mediterranean race

racial stock was also supported by his mentor Earnest Albert Hooton who in the same year published Twilight of Man, which notes: "The Nordic race is certainly a depigmented offshoot from the basic long-headed Mediterranean stock. It deserves separate racial classification only because its blond hair (ash or golden), its pure blue or gray eyes". This depigmentation theory received notable support from later anthropologists, thus in 1947 Melville Jacobs

Melville Jacobs

Melville Jacobs was an American anthropologist known for his extensive fieldwork on cultures of the Pacific Northwest. He was born in New York City. After studying with Franz Boas he became a member of the faculty of the University of Washington in 1928 and remained until his death in 1971...

noted: "To many physical anthropologists Nordic means a group with an especially high percentage of blondness, which represent a depigmentated Mediterranean". In her work Races of Man (1963, 2nd Ed. 1965) Sonia Mary Cole

Sonia Mary Cole

Sonia Mary Cole was a British geologist, anthropologist and author for the British Museum. Cole was a close friend of Mary Leakey who wrote her obituary. She is most remembered for her work Races of Man, which drew heavily from Carleton Coon....

went further to argue that the Nordic race belongs to the "brunette Mediterrenean" Caucasoid division but that it differs only in its higher percentage of blonde hair and light eyes. The Harvard anthropologist Claude Alvin Villee, Jr.

Claude Alvin Villee, Jr.

Claude Alvin Villee Jr. was an American biologist and long-time teacher at Harvard University....

also was a notable proponent of this theory, writing: "The Nordic division, a partially depigmized branch of the Meditterranean group." Collier's Encyclopedia
Collier's Encyclopedia
P.F. Collier & Son Company published Collier's New Encyclopedia from 1902–1929, initially in 16 volumes and later in 10 volumes.Collier's 11 volume National Encyclopedia replaced Collier's New Encyclopedia....

as late as 1984 contains an entry for this theory, citing anthropological support.

Lundman (1977)

In his work The Races and Peoples of Europe (1977) the Swedish anthropologist Bertil Lundman

Bertil Lundman

Bertil J. Lundman was a Swedish anthropologist. He is best known for having created a racial classification system of Europeans in his book The Races and Peoples of Europe .-Theory of European races:...

introduced the term "Nordid" to describe the Nordic race, described as follows:

Forensic Anthropology

Some forensic scientists, pathologists and anthropologists up to the 1990's continued to use the tripartite division of Caucasoids: Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean, based on their cranial anthropometry

Anthropometry

Anthropometry refers to the measurement of the human individual...

. The anthropologist Wilton M. Krogman for example identifies Nordic racial crania in her work "The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine" (1986) as being "dolichochranic". In his work "Forensic Pathology", published in 1991, Bernard Knight

Bernard Knight

Professor Bernard Knight, CBE, became a Home Office pathologist in 1965 and was appointed Professor of Forensic Pathology, University of Wales College of Medicine, in 1980. He was awarded the CBE in 1993 for services to forensic medicine....

, a Professor of Forensic Pathology, also uses the tripartite model and identifies the Nordic race based on its dolichocephalic skull shape. Forensic anthropologists of the 21st century however no longer continue to use the tripartite division of Caucasoids, but instead only recognise Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid through analysis of skeletal remains and not subraces of these racial groups.

21st Century

Please see the Genetic reality section below for a detailed discussion of current population genetics.

In the 21st century there is unanimous agreement among anthopologists and biologists that completely "pure" races do not and have not existed, even though there is still considerable support for the other meaning of the race, including meaning race as a subspecies of human specie. In other words, there are not identifiable clade

Clade

A clade is a group consisting of a species and all its descendants. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch" on the "tree of life". The idea that such a "natural group" of organisms should be grouped together and given a taxonomic name is central to biological...

s of humans that exactly correspond with any ethnic groups, although population genetics have identified some dominant clades among the ethno-linguistic groups. This opportunity for population genetics has reduced the degree of speculation about human prehistory and about the validity of early recorded history.

The male lineage represented by Haplogroup I1

Haplogroup I1 (Y-DNA)

is one such clade, stemming from a single male (Most Recent Common Ancestor

Most recent common ancestor

In genetics, the most recent common ancestor of any set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all organisms in the group are directly descended...

) who the latest research indicates lived in Northern Europe, perhaps Denmark, approximately 4,000 to 6,000 years ago.

Nordicism

By the early twentieth century the concept of a "masterly" Nordic race had become so familiar that the British

United Kingdom

psychologist

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

William McDougall

William McDougall (psychologist)

William McDougall FRS was an early twentieth century psychologist who spent the first part of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter part in the United States...

, writing in 1920, could say with confidence:

Among all the disputes and uncertainties of the ethnographers about the races of Europe, one fact stands out clearly — namely, that we can distinguish a race of northerly distribution and origin, characterized physically by fair colour of hair and skin and eyes, by tall stature and dolichocephaly (i.e. long shape of head), and mentally by great independence of character, individual initiative, and tenacity of will. Many names have been used to denote this type, ... . It is also called the Nordic type.

Nordicists claimed that Nordics had formed upper tiers of ancient civilizations, even in the Mediterranean civilizations of antiquity, which had declined once this dominant race had been assimilated. Thus they argued that ancient evidence suggested that leading Romans like Nero

Nero

Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....

, Sulla, and Cato

Cato the Elder

Marcus Porcius Cato was a Roman statesman, commonly referred to as Censorius , Sapiens , Priscus , or Major, Cato the Elder, or Cato the Censor, to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Cato the Younger.He came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some...

were blond or red-haired

Some Nordicists admitted the Mediterranean race was superior to the Nordic in terms of artistic and intellectual ability. However, the Nordic race was regarded as superior on the basis that, although Mediterranean peoples were culturally sophisticated, it was the Nordics who were alleged to be the innovators and conquerors, having an adventurous spirit that no other race could match.

The Alpine race was usually regarded as inferior to both the Nordic and Mediterranean races, making up the traditional peasant class of Europe while Nordics occupied the aristocracy and led the world in technology, and Mediterraneans were regarded as more imaginative.

Opponents of Nordicism rejected these arguments. The anti-Nordicist writer Giuseppe Sergi

Giuseppè Sergi

Giuseppe Sergi was an influential Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples...

argued in his influential book The Mediterranean Race (1901) that there was no evidence that the upper tiers of ancient societies were Nordic, insisting that historical and anthropological evidence contradicted such claims. Sergi argued that Mediterraneans constituted "the greatest race in the world", with a creative edge absent in the Nordic race. According to him, they were the creators of all the major ancient civilizations, from Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

to Rome

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

.

This argument was later repeated by C. G. Seligman, who wrote that "it must, I think, be recognized that the Mediterranean race has actually more achievement to its credit than any other". Even Carleton Coon insisted that among Greeks "the Nordic element is weak, as it probably has been since the days of Homer...It is my personal reaction to the living Greeks that their continuity with their ancestors of the ancient world is remarkable, rather than the opposite."

In the USA

In the USA, the primary spokesman for Nordicism was the eugenicist

Eugenics

Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...

Madison Grant

Madison Grant was an American lawyer, historian and physical anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...

. His 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History
The Passing of the Great Race
The Passing of The Great Race; or, The racial basis of European history was an influential book of scientific racism written by the American eugenicist, lawyer, and amateur anthropologist Madison Grant in 1916. The book was largely ignored when it first appeared but went through several revisions...

about Nordicism was highly influential among racial thinking and government policy making.

Grant used the theory as justification for immigration policies of the 1920s, arguing immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe represented a lesser type of European and their numbers in the United States should not be increased. Grant and others urged this as well as the complete restriction of non-Europeans, such as the Chinese and Japanese.

Grant argued the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, and admixture was "race suicide" and unless eugenic policies were enacted, the Nordic race would be supplanted by inferior races. Future president Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge

John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the 30th President of the United States . A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state...

agreed, stating "Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides."

The Immigration Act of 1924

Immigration Act of 1924

The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act , was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already...

was signed into law by President Coolidge. This was designed to reduce the number of Eastern and Southern European immigrants, exclude Asian immigrants altogether, and favor immigration from Northern and Western European countries such as Britain

United Kingdom

, Ireland

Irish Free State

The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...

and Germany

Germany

.

The spread of these ideas also affected popular culture. F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

invokes Grant's ideas through a character in part of The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922....

, and Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...

jokingly rhapsodied the "Nordic man" in a poem and essay in which he satirised the stereotypes of Nordics, Alpines and Mediterraneans.

Writers such as Jack London

Jack London

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

, Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....

and H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....

reflected Nordicist ideas in their fictions.

Nordic thought in Germany

In Germany, however, the influence of Nordicism remained powerful. There it was known under the term "Nordischer Gedanke" (Nordic thought).

This phrase was coined by the German eugenicists Erwin Baur

Erwin Baur

Erwin Baur was a German geneticist and botanist. Baur worked primarily on plant genetics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Breeding Research . Baur is considered to be the father of plant virology...

, Eugen Fischer

Eugen Fischer

Eugen Fischer was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics between 1927 and 1942...

and Fritz Lenz

Fritz Lenz

Fritz A Lenz was a German geneticist, member of the Nazi party, and influential specialist in "racial hygiene" during the Third Reich, one of the leading German theorists of "scientific racism" which legitimized the Nazi racial policies, starting with the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.- Biography...

. It appeared in their 1921 work Human Heredity, which insisted on the innate superiority of the Nordic race.

Adapting the arguments of Schopenhauer and others to Darwinian theory, they argued that the qualities of initiative and will-power identified by earlier writers had arisen from natural selection

Natural selection

Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....

, because of the tough landscape in which Nordic peoples evolved. This had ensured that weaker individuals had not survived.

This argument was derived from earlier eugenicist and Social Darwinist

Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...

ideas. According to the authors, the Nordic race arose in the ice age, from,

quite a small group which, under stress of rapidly changing conditions (climate, beasts of the chase) was exposed to exceptionally rigorous selection and was persistently inbred, thus acquiring the peculiar characteristics which persist today as the exclusive heritage of the Nordic race....Philological, archaeological and anthropological researches combine to indicate that the primal home of the Indo-Germanic [i.e Aryan] languages must have been in Northern Europe.

They went on to argue that "the original Indo-Germanic civilization" was carried by Nordic migrants as far as India, and that the physiognomy of upper-caste Indians "disclose a Nordic origin".

By this time, Germany was well-accustomed to theories of race and racial superiority due to the long presence of the Völkish movement, the philosophy that Germans constituted a unique people, or volk, linked by common blood. While Völkism was popular mainly among Germany's lower classes and was more a romanticized version of ethnic nationalism, Nordicism attracted German anthropologists and eugenicists.

Hans F. K. Günther, one of Fischer's students, first defined "Nordic thought" in his programmatic book Der Nordische Gedanke unter den Deutschen. He became the most influential German in this field. His Short Ethnology of the German People (1929) was very widely circulated.

In his Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (Race-Lore of the German Volk), published 1922, Günther identified five principal European races instead of three, adding the East Baltic race

East Baltic race

The East Baltic race is one of the subcategories of the Europid race into which it was divided by anthropologists in the early 20th century....

and Dinaric race

Dinaric race

The Dinaric race is one of the sub-categories of the Europid race into which it was divided by physical anthropologists in the early 20th century...

to Ripley's categories. He used the term Ostic instead of Alpine. He focused on their supposedly distinct mental attributes.

Günther criticised the Völkish idea, stating that the Germans were not racially unified, but were actually one of the most racially diverse peoples in Europe. Despite this, many Völkists who merged Völkism and Nordicism embraced Günther's ideas, most notably the Nazis.

Nazi Nordicism

Adolf Hitler

read Human Heredity shortly before he wrote Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...

, and called it scientific proof of the racial basis of civilization. Its arguments were also repeated by the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg

' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...

, in his book The Myth of the Twentieth Century
The Myth of the Twentieth Century
The Myth of the Twentieth Century is a book by Alfred Rosenberg, one of the principal ideologues of the Nazi party and editor of the Nazi paper Völkischer Beobachter. It was the most influential Nazi text after Hitler's Mein Kampf. The titular "myth" is "the myth of blood, which under the sign of...

(1930).

Rosenberg argued that the Nordic race had evolved in a now-lost landmass off the coast of North Western Europe, and had migrated through Scandinavia and northern Europe, expanding further south, and as far as Iran and India where it founded the Aryan cultures of Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster and was formerly among the world's largest religions. It was probably founded some time before the 6th century BCE in Greater Iran.In Zoroastrianism, the Creator Ahura Mazda is all good, and no evil...

and Hinduism

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

. Like Grant and others, he argued that the entrepreneurial energy of the Nordics had "degenerated" when they mixed with "inferior" peoples.

With the rise of Hitler, Nordic theory became the norm within German culture. In some cases the "Nordic" concept became an almost abstract ideal rather than a mere racial category. For example Hermann Gauch

Hermann Gauch

Hermann Gauch was a Nazi race theorist noted for his dedication to Nordic theory. Gauch was a physician who had joined the National Socialists in the 1920s, wrote six books of "race research" as a member of the SS, and to his dying day remained an unrepentant believer in Nazi ideology...

wrote in 1933 (in a book which was banned in the Third Reich) that the fact that "birds can be taught to talk better than other animals is explained by the fact that their mouths are Nordic in structure." He further claimed that in humans, "the shape of the Nordic gum allows a superior movement of the tongue, which is the reason why Nordic talking and singing are richer."

Such views were extreme, but more mainstream Nordic theory was institutionalized. Hans F. K. Günther, who joined the Nazi Party in 1932, was praised as a pioneer in racial thinking, a shining light of Nordic theory. Most official Nazi comments on the Nordic Race were based on Günther's works, and Alfred Rosenberg presented Günther with a medal for his work in anthropology.

Eugen Fischer

Eugen Fischer

Eugen Fischer was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics between 1927 and 1942...

and Fritz Lenz

Fritz Lenz

were also appointed to senior positions overseeing the policy of Racial Hygiene

Racial hygiene

Racial hygiene was a set of early twentieth century state sanctioned policies by which certain groups of individuals were allowed to procreate and others not, with the expressed purpose of promoting certain characteristics deemed to be particularly desirable...

. Madison Grant

Madison Grant

Madison Grant was an American lawyer, historian and physical anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...

's book was the first non-German book to be translated and published by the Nazi Reich press, and Grant proudly displayed to his friends a letter from Hitler claiming that the book was "his Bible."

The Nazi state used such ideas about the differences between European races as part of their various discriminatory and coercive policies which culminated in the Holocaust. Ironically, in Grant's first edition of his popular book, he classified the Germans as being primarily Nordic, but in his second edition, published after the USA had entered World War I, he had re-classified the now enemy power as being dominated by "inferior" Alpines.

Günther's work agreed with Grant's, and the German anthropologist frequently stated that the Germans are definitely not a fully Nordic people. Hitler himself was later to downplay the importance of Nordicism in public for this very reason. The standard tripartite

Tripartite Pact

The Tripartite Pact, also the Three-Power Pact, Axis Pact, Three-way Pact or Tripartite Treaty was a pact signed in Berlin, Germany on September 27, 1940, which established the Axis Powers of World War II...

model placed most of the population of Hitler's Germany in the Alpine category, especially after the Anschluss

Anschluss

The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

.

J. Kaup led a movement opposed to Günther. Kaup took the view that a German nation, all of whose citizens belonged to a "German race" in a populationist sense, offered a more convenient sociotechnical tool than Günther's concept of an ideal Nordic type to which only a very few Germans could belong.

Nazi legislation identifying the ethnic and "racial" affinities of the Jews reflects the populationist concept of race. Discrimination was not restricted to Jews who belonged to the "Oriental-Armenoid" race, but was directed against all members of the Jewish ethnic population.

The German Jewish journalist Kurt Caro (1905–1979) who emigrated to Paris in 1933 and served in the British army from 1943, published a book under the pseudonym Manuel Humbert unmasking Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in which he stated the following racial composition of the Jewish population of Central Europe: 23,8% Lapponid race, 21,5% Nordic race,
20,3% Armenoid race, 18,4% Mediterranean race, 16,0% Oriental race.

By 1939 Hitler had abandoned Nordicist rhetoric in favour of the idea that the German people as a whole were united by distinct "spiritual" qualities. Nevertheless, Nazi eugenics policies continued to favor Nordics over Alpines and other racial groups, particularly during the war when decisions were being made about the incorporation of conquered peoples into the Reich.

In 1942 Hitler stated in private,

I shall have no peace of mind until I have planted a seed of Nordic blood wherever the population stand in need of regeneration. If at the time of the migrations
Migration Period
The Migration Period, also called the Barbarian Invasions , was a period of intensified human migration in Europe that occurred from c. 400 to 800 CE. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages...

, while the great racial currents were exercising their influence, our people received so varied a share of attributes, these latter blossomed to their full value only because of the presence of the Nordic racial nucleus.

Hitler and Himmler

Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...

planned to use the SS as the basis for the racial "regeneration" of Europe following the final victory of Nazism. The SS was to be a racial elite chosen on the basis of "pure" Nordic qualities.

Addressing officers of the SS-Leibstandarte "Adolf Hitler"

1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler

The Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler was Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard. Initially the size of a regiment, the LSSAH eventually grew into a divisional-sized unit...

Himmler stated:

The ultimate aim for those 11 years during which I have been the Reichsfuehrer SS has been invariably the same: to create an order of good blood which is able to serve Germany; which unfailingly and without sparing itself can be made use of because the greatest losses can do no harm to the vitality of this order, the vitality of these men, because they will always be replaced; to create an order which will spread the idea of Nordic blood so far that we will attract all Nordic blood in the world, take away the blood from our adversaries, absorb it so that never again, looking at it from the viewpoint of grand policy, Nordic blood, in great quantities and to an extent worth mentioning, will fight against us.

Critiques of Nordicism

By the 1930s, criticism of the Nordicist model was growing in Britain and America. The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee

Arnold J. Toynbee

Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...

in A Study of History (1934) argued that the most dynamic civilisations have arisen from racially mixed cultures. In southern Europe the theory understandably had less influence.

Some Lombard

Lombardy

Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...

nationalists took it up in Italy, but even after the establishment of Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

's fascist government racial theories were not prominent. Mussolini stated, "Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist."

Decline of Nordicism

Even before the rise of Nazism, Grant's concept of "race" lost favor in the USA in the polarizing political climate after World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, including the Great Migration

Great Migration (African American)

The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration , numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration , in which 5 million or more...

and the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

.

This required the abandonment of Grant's gradations of "white" in favour of the "One-drop theory" — which was embraced by white supremacists and black supremacists alike. Among the latter were Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...

, and, in part, W. E. B. Du Bois, at least in his later thought.

With the rise of Nazism many critics pointed to the flaws in the theory, repeating the arguments made by Sergi and others that the evidence of ancient Nordic achievement is thin when set against the civilizations of the Mediterranean and elsewhere. The equation of Nordic and Aryan identity was also widely criticised.

In 1936 M.W. Fodor, writing in The Nation, claimed that racialised Germanic nationalism arose from an inferiority complex

Inferiority complex

An inferiority complex, in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis, is a feeling that one is inferior to others in some way. Such feelings can arise from an imagined or actual inferiority in the afflicted person...

No race has suffered so much from an inferiority complex
Inferiority complex
An inferiority complex, in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis, is a feeling that one is inferior to others in some way. Such feelings can arise from an imagined or actual inferiority in the afflicted person...

as has the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. National Socialism was a kind of Coué method
Émile Coué
Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion....

of converting the inferiority complex, at least temporarily, into a feeling of superiority.

After World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, the categorization of peoples into "superior" and "inferior" groups fell even further out of political and scientific favor, eventually leading to the characterization of such theories as scientific racism

Scientific racism

. The tripartite subdivision of "Caucasians" into Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean groups persisted among some scientists into the 1960s, notably in Carleton Coon's book The Origin of Races (1962).

Already race academics such as A. James Gregor

A. James Gregor

A. James Gregor is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley who is well known for his research on fascism, Marxism, and national security...

were heavily criticizing Nordicism. In 1961 Gregor called it a "philosophy of despair", on the grounds that its obsession with purity doomed it to ultimate pessimism

Pessimism

Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...

and isolationism

Isolationism

Isolationism is the policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by...

.

As late as 1977 the Swedish author Bertil Lundman

Bertil Lundman

wrote a book The Races And Peoples Of Europe mentioning a "Nordid Race". The development of the Kurgan theory

Kurgan hypothesis

The Kurgan hypothesis is one of the proposals about early Indo-European origins, which postulates that the people of an archaeological "Kurgan culture" in the Pontic steppe were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language...

of Indo-European origins weakened the Nordicist equation of Aryan and Nordic identity, since it placed the earliest Indo-European speakers around central Asia and/or far-eastern Europe (although according the Kurgan hypothesis some Proto-Indo-Europeans

Proto-Indo-Europeans

did eventually migrate west into Northern Europe

Northern Europe

Northern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. Northern Europe typically refers to the seven countries in the northern part of the European subcontinent which includes Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and Sweden...

and become the ancestors of the Nordic peoples.)

The original German term used by Ripley, "Theodiscus", which is translated into English as Teutonic, has fallen out of favour amongst German-speaking scholars, and is restricted to a somewhat ironical usage similar to the archaic teutsch, if used at all. While the term is still present in English, which has retained it in some contexts as a translation of the traditional Latin Teutonicus (most notably the aforementioned Teutonic Order), it should not be translated into German as "Teutonisch" except when referring to the historical Teutones.

Genetic reality

The emergence of population genetics

Population genetics

Population genetics is the study of allele frequency distribution and change under the influence of the four main evolutionary processes: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow. It also takes into account the factors of recombination, population subdivision and population...

further undermined the categorisation of Europeans into clearly defined racial groups. A 2007 study using samples exclusively from Europe found an unusually high degree of European homogeneity: "there is low apparent diversity in Europe with the entire continent-wide samples only marginally more dispersed than single population samples elsewhere in the world."

Autosomal genetic distances (Fst) based on SNPs (2009)

The genetic distance between populations is often measured by Fixation index (Fst), based on genetic polymorphism data, such as single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or microsatellites. Fst is a special case of F-statistics

F-statistics

In population genetics, F-statistics describe the level of heterozygosity in a population; more specifically the degree of a reduction in heterozygosity when compared to Hardy–Weinberg expectation...

, the concept developed in the 1920s by Sewall Wright

Sewall Wright

Sewall Green Wright was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory and also for his work on path analysis. With R. A. Fisher and J.B.S. Haldane, he was a founder of theoretical population genetics. He is the discoverer of the inbreeding coefficient and of...

. Fst is simply the correlation of randomly chosen alleles within the same sub-population relative to that found in the entire population. It is often expressed as the proportion of genetic diversity due to allele frequency differences among populations. The greater the Fst value, the greater the genetic distance.
CEU - Utah residents with ancestry from Northern and Western Europe.>

Intra-European/mediterranean autosomal genetic distances based on SNPs
	Austria	Bulgaria	Czech Republic	Estonia	Finland (Helsinki)	Finland (Kuusamo)	France	Northern Germany	Southern Germany	Hungary	Northern Italy	Southern Italy	Latvia	Lithuania	Poland	Russia	Spain	Sweden	Switzerland	CEU
Austria		1.14	1.08	1.58	2.24	3.30	1.16	1.10	1.04	1.04	1.49	1.79	1.85	1.70	1.19	1.47	1.41	1.21	1.19	1.12	Austria
Bulgaria	1.14		1.21	1.70	2.19	2.91	1.22	1.32	1.19	1.10	1.32	1.38	1.86	1.73	1.29	1.53	1.30	1.47	1.13	1.29	Bulgaria
Czech Republic	1.08	1.21		1.42	2.20	3.26	1.35	1.15	1.16	1.06	1.69	2.04	1.62	1.48	1.09	1.27	1.63	1.26	1.37	1.21	Czech Republic
Estonia	1.58	1.70	1.42		1.71	2.80	2.08	1.53	1.70	1.41	2.42	2.93	1.24	1.28	1.17	1.21	2.54	1.49	2.16	1.59	Estonia
Finland (Helsinki)	2.24	2.19	2.20	1.71		1.86	2.69	2.17	2.35	1.87	2.82	3.37	2.31	2.33	1.75	2.10	3.14	1.89	2.77	1.99	Finland (Helsinki)
Finland (Kuusamo)	3.30	2.91	3.26	2.80	1.86		3.72	3.27	3.46	2.68	3.64	4.18	3.33	3.37	2.49	3.16	4.21	2.87	3.83	2.89	Finland (Kuusamo)
France	1.16	1.22	1.35	2.08	2.69	3.72		1.25	1.12	1.16	1.38	1.68	2.40	2.20	1.44	1.94	1.13	1.38	1.10	1.13	France
Northern Germany	1.10	1.32	1.15	1.53	2.17	3.27	1.25		1.08	1.11	1.72	2.14	1.84	1.66	1.18	1.49	1.62	1.12	1.36	1.06	Northern Germany
Southern Germany	1.04	1.19	1.16	1.70	2.35	3.46	1.12	1.08		1.08	1.53	1.85	1.20	1.84	1.23	1.58	1.40	1.21	1.17	1.07	Southern Germany
Hungary	1.04	1.10	1.06	1.41	1.87	2.68	1.16	1.11	1.08		1.42	1.63	1.58	1.46	1.14	1.28	1.32	1.22	1.16	1.13	Hungary
Northern Italy	1.49	1.32	1.69	2.42	2.82	3.64	1.38	1.72	1.53	1.42		1.54	2.64	2.48	1.75	2.24	1.42	1.86	1.36	1.56	Northern Italy
Southern Italy	1.79	1.38	2.04	2.93	3.37	4.18	1.68	2.14	1.85	1.63	1.54		3.14	2.96	1.99	2.68	1.67	2.28	1.54	1.84	Southern Italy
Latvia	1.85	1.86	1.62	1.24	2.31	3.33	2.40	1.84	1.20	1.58	2.64	3.14		1.20	1.26	1.32	2.82	1.89	2.52	1.87	Latvia
Lithuania	1.70	1.73	1.48	1.28	2.33	3.37	2.20	1.66	1.84	1.46	2.48	2.96	1.20		1.20	1.26	2.62	1.74	2.29	1.74	Lithuania
Poland	1.19	1.29	1.09	1.17	1.75	2.49	1.44	1.18	1.23	1.14	1.75	1.99	1.26	1.20		1.18	1.66	1.30	1.46	1.28	Poland
Russia	1.47	1.53	1.27	1.21	2.10	3.16	1.94	1.49	1.58	1.28	2.24	2.68	1.32	1.26	1.18		2.32	1.59	1.20	1.56	Russia
Spain	1.41	1.30	1.63	2.54	3.14	4.21	1.13	1.62	1.40	1.32	1.42	1.67	2.82	2.62	1.66	2.32		1.73	1.16	1.34	Spain
Sweden	1.21	1.47	1.26	1.49	1.89	2.87	1.38	1.12	1.21	1.22	1.86	2.28	1.89	1.74	1.30	1.59	1.73		1.50	1.09	Sweden
Switzerland	1.19	1.13	1.37	2.16	2.77	3.83	1.10	1.36	1.17	1.16	1.36	1.54	2.52	2.29	1.46	1.20	1.16	1.50		1.21	Switzerland
CEU	1.12	1.29	1.21	1.59	1.99	2.89	1.13	1.06	1.07	1.13	1.56	1.84	1.87	1.74	1.28	1.56	1.34	1.09	1.21		CEU
	Austria	Bulgaria	Czech Republic	Estonia	Finland (Helsinki)	Finland (Kuusamo)	France	Northern Germany	Southern Germany	Hungary	Northern Italy	Southern Italy	Latvia	Lithuania	Poland	Russia	Spain	Sweden	Switzerland	CEU

Listed here are notable ethnic groups within Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

that were considered Nordic, and those assumed to have received considerable Nordic input at some time in History from those population groups above and this is their inner percentages of variability by human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups

Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups

In human genetics, a Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup is a haplogroup defined by differences in the non-recombining portions of DNA from the Y chromosome ....

based on the relevant studies done recently on tested members of its population. The samples are taken from individuals identified with the ethnic and linguistic designations in the first two columns, the third column gives the amount of total Sample Size studied, and the other columns give the Percentage of the particular genetic Y haplogroup. Those ethnic groups formerly considered racially pure nordic or mostly Nordic show again and again to be a mixed composition of different European lineages within varied degrees, but none unique or exclusive to those from other Europeans considered before Southern or Eastern (not Nordic) and, or, racially different.

It is now known that many times the Nordic or other phenotypes of external features of physiognomy

Physiognomy

Physiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face...

inherited do not correlate or recombine with any particular direct blood lines

Patrilineality

Patrilineality is a system in which one belongs to one's father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritance of property, names or titles through the male line as well....

, even from those of non-European origin.

Population	Language	n	R1b Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA) The point of origin of R1b is thought to lie in Eurasia, most likely in Western Asia. T. Karafet et al. estimated the age of R1, the parent of R1b, as 18,500 years before present....	R1a Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA) Haplogroup R1a is the phylogenetic name of a major clade of Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups. In other words, it is a way of grouping a significant part of all modern men according to a shared male-line ancestor. It is common in many parts of Eurasia and is frequently discussed in human...	I Haplogroup I (Y-DNA) In human genetics, Haplogroup I is a Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup, a subgroup of haplogroup IJ, itself a derivative of Haplogroup IJK....	E1b1b	J Haplogroup J (Y-DNA) In human genetics, Haplogroup J is a Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. It is one of the major male lines of all living men...	G Haplogroup G (Y-DNA) In human genetics, Haplogroup G is a Y-chromosome haplogroup. It is a branch of Haplogroup F . Haplogroup G has an overall low frequency in most populations but is widely distributed within many ethnic groups of the Old World in Europe, northern and western Asia, northern Africa, the Middle East,...	N Haplogroup N (Y-DNA) In human genetics, Haplogroup N is a Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup, defined by the presence of the marker M231. The b2/b3 deletion in the AZFc region of the human Y-chromosome is a characteristic of Haplogroup N haplotypes. This deletion, however, appears to have occurred independently on four...	T Haplogroup T (Y-DNA) In human genetics, Haplogroup T is a human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. From 2002 to 2008, it was known as Haplogroup K2. It should not be confused with the mitochondrial DNA haplogroup T, of the same name....	L Haplogroup L (Y-DNA) In human genetics, Haplogroup L is a Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup.-Origins:Haplogroup L is associated with South Asia. It has also been found at low frequencies among populations of Central Asia, Southwest Asia, and Southern Europe along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea...	Others	Reference
Swedes (Northern)	IE (Germanic, North)	48			—			—		—	—	—	Rosser2000
Swedes	IE (Germanic, North)	110			—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Helgason2000
Swedes Swedes Swedes are a Scandinavian nation and ethnic group native to Sweden, mostly inhabiting Sweden and the other Nordic countries, with descendants living in a number of countries.-Etymology:...	IE (Germanic, North)	160						—		—	—	—	Lappalainen2008
Norwegians Norwegians Norwegians constitute both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway. They share a common culture and speak the Norwegian language. Norwegian people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in United States, Canada and Brazil.-History:Towards the end of the 3rd...	IE (Germanic, North)	52	—		—			—				—	Rosser2000
Norwegians Norwegians Norwegians constitute both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway. They share a common culture and speak the Norwegian language. Norwegian people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in United States, Canada and Brazil.-History:Towards the end of the 3rd...	IE (Germanic, North)					—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Danes	IE (Germanic, North)	12			—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Helgason2000
Danes	IE (Germanic, North)	194	—	—		—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Rootsi2004
Danes	IE (Germanic, North)	35	—	—	—		—	—	—	—	—	—	Cruciani2004
Icelanders Icelanders Icelanders are a Scandinavian ethnic group and a nation, native to Iceland.On 17 June 1944, when an Icelandic republic was founded the Icelanders became independent from the Danish monarchy. The language spoken is Icelandic, a North Germanic language, and Lutheranism is the predominant religion...	IE (Germanic, North)	181				—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Helgason2000
Orcadians Orcadians Orcadians, who reside primarily in Orkney, are the descendants of Iron Age Picts, Norwegian Vikings and Scots. Because Orkney is a trading hub Orcadians are found all over the world....	IE (Germanic, West)	71			—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Wilson2001
Sami Sami people The Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are the arctic indigenous people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. The Sámi are Europe’s northernmost... (Sweden)	Uralic (Finnic)	38										—	Karlsson2006
Ashkenazi Jews Ashkenazi Jews Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...	IE (Germanic, West)	79	—		—			—	—	—		—	Nebel2001
Ashkenazi Jews Ashkenazi Jews Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...	IE (Germanic, West)	442	—	—						—		—	Behar2004
Austrians Austrians Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....	IE (Germanic, West)	219	32	14	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Bavarians	IE (Germanic, West)	80			—			—			—	—	Rosser2000
Belgians Belgians Belgians are people originating from the Kingdom of Belgium, a federal state in Western Europe.-Etymology:Belgians are a relatively "new" people...	IE (Germanic/Italic)	92			—		—	—	—	—	—	—	Rosser2000
Belarusians Belarusians Belarusians ; are an East Slavic ethnic group who populate the majority of the Republic of Belarus. Introduced to the world as a new state in the early 1990s, the Republic of Belarus brought with it the notion of a re-emerging Belarusian ethnicity, drawn upon the lines of the Old Belarusian...	IE (Slavic, East)	306			—			—		—	—	—	Behar2003
British British people The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...	IE (Germanic, West)	32			—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Helgason2000
Czechs	IE (Slavic, West)	257	—							—	—	—	Luca2007
Czechs and Slovaks Slovaks The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...	IE (Slavic, West)	45			—		—	—	—	—	—	—	Semino2000
Czechs and Slovaks Slovaks The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...	IE (Slavic, West)	198	—	—		—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Rootsi2004
Dutch Dutch people The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...	IE (Germanic, West)	27			—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Semino2000
Dutch Dutch people The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...	IE (Germanic, West)		—	—			0	—	—	—	—	—
English English people The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens... (Central)	IE (Germanic, West)	215			—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Weale2002
Estonians Estonians Estonians are a Finnic people closely related to the Finns and inhabiting, primarily, the country of Estonia. They speak a Finnic language known as Estonian...	Uralic (Finnic)	325			—			—		—	—	—	Rosser2000, Kasperaviciute2004
Finns	Uralic (Finnic)	57			—		—	—		—	—	—	Rosser2000
Finns	Uralic (Finnic)	38				—	—	—		—	—	—	Tambets2004
Frisians Frisians The Frisians are a Germanic ethnic group native to the coastal parts of the Netherlands and Germany. They are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia, that was a part of Denmark until 1864. They inhabit an area known as Frisia...	IE (Germanic, West)	94						—	—	—	—	—	Wilson2001
Frisians Frisians The Frisians are a Germanic ethnic group native to the coastal parts of the Netherlands and Germany. They are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia, that was a part of Denmark until 1864. They inhabit an area known as Frisia...	IE (Germanic, West)	94						—	—	—	—	—	Weale2002
Germans	IE (Germanic, West)	48			—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Helgason2000
Germans	IE (Germanic, West)	16	50	6.2	37.5	6.2	0	0	0	0	0	—	Semino2000
Germans	IE (Germanic, Berlin)	103			32			—		—	—	—	Kayser
Greeks Greeks The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....	IE (Greek)	77									—	—	Firasat2007
Hungarians	Uralic (Ugric)	45	13.3	60.0	11.1	8.9	2.2	2.2	0.0	0.0	2.2	—	Semino2000
Komi Komi peoples The Komi people is an ethnic group whose homeland is in the north-east of European Russia around the basins of the Vychegda, Pechora and Kama rivers. They mostly live in the Komi Republic, Perm Krai, Murmansk Oblast, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the Russian...	Uralic (Finnic)	94				—	—	—		—	—	—	Tambets2004
Komi Komi peoples The Komi people is an ethnic group whose homeland is in the north-east of European Russia around the basins of the Vychegda, Pechora and Kama rivers. They mostly live in the Komi Republic, Perm Krai, Murmansk Oblast, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the Russian... (Priluzsky Priluzsky District Priluzsky District is an administrative district , one of the twelve in the Komi Republic, Russia. Municipally, it is incorporated as Priluzsky Municipal District. Its administrative center is the rural locality of Obyachevo. District's population: Population of Obyachevo accounts for 23.6% of... )	Uralic (Finnic)	49										—	Mirabal2009
Latvians Latvians Latvians or Letts are the indigenous Baltic people of Latvia.-History:Latvians occasionally refer to themselves by the ancient name of Latvji, which may have originated from the word Latve which is a name of the river that presumably flowed through what is now eastern Latvia...	IE (Baltic)	148	-		—		—	—		—	—	—	Kasperaviciute2004
Lithuanians Lithuanians Lithuanians are the Baltic ethnic group native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,765,600 people. Another million or more make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Russia, United Kingdom and Ireland. Their native language...	IE (Baltic)	196	—		—		—	—		—	—	—	Kasperaviciute2004
ethnic Macedonians Macedonians (ethnic group) The Macedonians also referred to as Macedonian Slavs: "... the term Slavomacedonian was introduced and was accepted by the community itself, which at the time had a much more widespread non-Greek Macedonian ethnic consciousness...	IE (Slavic, South)	211										—	Noveski2010
Macedonians Macedonians (ethnic group) The Macedonians also referred to as Macedonian Slavs: "... the term Slavomacedonian was introduced and was accepted by the community itself, which at the time had a much more widespread non-Greek Macedonian ethnic consciousness... (Skopje Skopje Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre... )	IE (Slavic, South)	52							—	—	—	—	Bosch2006
Mari	Uralic (Finnic)	111				—	—	—		—	—	—	Tambets2004
Ossetians Ossetians The Ossetians are an Iranic ethnic group of the Caucasus Mountains, eponymous of the region known as Ossetia.They speak Ossetic, an Iranian language of the Eastern branch, with most also fluent in Russian as a second language....	IE (Iranic, NE)	47			—			—	—	—	—	—	Rosser2000
Poles	IE (Slavic, West)	93				—	—	—		—	—	—	Tambets2004
Russians Russians The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....	IE (Slavic, East)	122			—			—		—	—	—	Rosser2000
Russians Russians The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries.... (Northern Northern economic region Northern economic region tr.: Severny ekonomichesky rayon) is one of twelve economic regions of Russia.-Composition:Arkhangelsk OblastRepublic of KareliaKomi RepublicMurmansk OblastNenets Autonomous OkrugVologda Oblast... )	IE (Slavic, East)	380										—	Balanovsky2008
Russians (Belgorod region)	IE (Slavic, East)	143				—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Balanovsky
Scots Scottish people The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...	IE (Celtic)	178	—	—		—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Rootsi2004
Scots Scottish people The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...	IE (Celtic)	61			—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Helgason2000
Swiss	IE (German/Italic)	144	—	—		—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Rootsi2004
Welsh Welsh people The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have... (Anglesey Anglesey Anglesey , also known by its Welsh name Ynys Môn , is an island and, as Isle of Anglesey, a county off the north west coast of Wales... )	IE (Celtic)	88			—		—	—	—	—	—	—	Wilson2001

External links

Examples of Nordics (plates 27-30 and 32-34) from Carleton Coon's The Races of Europe
The Racial Basis of Civilization by Frank H. Hankins critique of the Nordic doctrine (full text)
"Nordicism revisited, by A James Gregor

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Physical traits

Attitudes in ancient Europe

Origins of Nordicism

Influence of Aryanism

20th century

Coon (1939)

Depigmentation Theory

Lundman (1977)

Forensic Anthropology

21st Century

Nordicism

In the USA

Nordic thought in Germany

Nazi Nordicism

Critiques of Nordicism

Decline of Nordicism

Genetic reality

Autosomal genetic distances (Fst) based on SNPs (2009)

See also

Further reading

External links