Nordic theory

Nordic theory (or Nordicism) was a theory of race prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It drew on the dominant anthropological model of the day which divided European peoples into three sub-categories of the Caucasian race: the Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean races. The Nordic race was thought to be prevalent in northern Europe, especially among speakers of the Germanic languages, and was characterized by tall stature, long head- and facial form, straight and fine blond, red, or light brown hair, and blue , grey or green eyes. The Alpine race was thought to predominate in central Europe, and was characterized by short stature and comparatively round head. The Mediterranean race was thought to be prevalent in southern Europe and, sometimes, parts of North Africa, and was characterised by dark curly hair and swarthy complexion (according to some theorists of this period this was due to racial mixing with African peoples).

Related Topics:
Race - European - Caucasian race - Alpine - Mediterranean - Germanic languages - Blond - Red - Brown hair - Blue - Green eyes

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The term "Nordic" was initially proposed as a racial group by the French anthropologist Joseph Deniker. 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 which he coined) than a biogical "race". It was the work of sociologist/economist William Z. Ripley which popularized the idea of three biological European races, and he borrowed Deniker's terminology (he had previously used the term "Teuton") in his 1899 canonical work, The Races of Europe, where he divided the races of Europe up by a variety of anthropometric measurements, but focusing especially on their cephalic index and stature.

Related Topics:
Joseph Deniker - William Z. Ripley - Teuton - Anthropometric - Cephalic index - Stature

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Prior to the adoption of the term "Nordic", the Anglo-German racial theorist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who would become a role model for Adolf Hitler, had classified a supposedly superior Northern branch of the Aryan race as the original Celtic and Germanic peoples, as well as some Slavic peoples, namely the Balts, Belgians, Dutch, English, French, Germans, Irish, Poles, Scandinavians, Scots, and Welsh. Chamberlain would refer to these people as Celto-Germanic, which is essentially the same as Nordic.

Related Topics:
Houston Stewart Chamberlain - Aryan race

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By the early years of the twentieth century the notion of a distinct Nordic group was well established. The British psychologist William McDougall, writing at this time, stated that,

Related Topics:
British - Psychologist - William McDougall

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: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 color 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. (The Group Mind, p.159, Arno Press, 1973 edition; Copyright, 1920 by G.P. Putnam's Sons).

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Because of these supposed characteristics, among many white supremacists in Europe and the USA, the Nordic race came to be thought of as the most advanced of human population groups, hence its equation in Nazi ideology with the so-called master race. It even came to be identified as an entirely independent grouping rather than just a small division of the more distinct Caucasoid or White Race. Nordicism was thus a particular type of white supremacism, one which did not recognize all degrees of "white" as being equal. Italians, Slavs, and Jews were among those considered significantly inferior to the Nordics.

Related Topics:
White supremacists - Nazi - Master race

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Nordics were thought to have originated in very small numbers only in Scandinavia. Evolving in this tough climate was supposed to have resulted in their developing superior survival skills to other peoples. They then migrated south, inhabiting most of Western Europe, parts of Eastern Europe, and reaching Greece, Italy, and even Egypt and India (see Aryan invasion theory). The migration model functioned to address the uncomfortable fact that Mediterranean peoples were responsible for the most important of ancient civilizations. This was a problem for those who promoted the merits of the Nordic race. The anti-Nordicist writer Giuseppè Sergi's influential book The Mediterranean Race (1901) argued that this southern race's mixed character gave it its creative edge. The Nordicists's speculative approach to this problem was to claim that many of the achievements of Mediterranean culture were really the result of Nordic migrants who had formed the upper classes of ancient Mediterranean civilizations, and had eventually mixed with local peoples, giving the natives the brain power to build the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian civilizations. The civilizations in these places were supposedly greater because of the warm climate, while the pure Nordics in the north had to overcome the harsh terrain, but were eventually able to build the Celtic and Viking civilizations, the two gems of the pure Nordic Race.

Related Topics:
Aryan invasion theory - Giuseppè Sergi

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In the USA, the primary spokesman for "Nordicism" was the eugenicist Madison Grant, who used it as a justification for anti-immigration policies of the 1920s, arguing that the immigrants from Southern and Eastern European represented an "inferior" type of European and should hence be restricted. Grant was more rigid than predecessors such as Chamberlain when it came to accepting people as Nordic, declaring peoples with the smallest trace of supposedly non-Nordic ancestry to be inferior. His 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History about Nordicism was highly influential among racial thinking, government policy making, and even on popular culture (F. Scott Fitzgerald invokes Grant's ideas through a character in part of The Great Gatsby). Grant argued that the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, that "admixture" was "race suicide", and that unless various eugenic policies were enacted, the Nordic race would be supplanted by the "inferior" races.

Related Topics:
Eugenicist - Madison Grant - F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

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In the USA, though, this concept of "race" lost favor in the polarizing political climate after the first World War, including the Great Migration and the Depression. The influx of African-Americans into the Northern states in this time resulted in a "flattening" of racial categories into what racial theorist and eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard named as "bi-racialism" — the rigid black/white distinction which abandoned Grant's gradations of "white" in favour of the one drop theory — and which was embraced both by white supremacists and black nationalists alike. Among the latter were Marcus Garvey, and, in part, W.E.B. Du Bois, at least in his later thought.

Related Topics:
First World War - Great Migration - Depression - African-American - Lothrop Stoddard - One drop theory - Marcus Garvey - W.E.B. Du Bois

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But at the same time as the theory was losing favor the USA, it was vastly influential in Germany, with the ascent of Adolf Hitler, who tended to merge the terms "Nordic" and "Aryan" (in ways which were often criticized by foreign scientists). Grant'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 program of Racial Hygiene and 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 WWI, he had re-classified the now enemy power as being dominated by "inferior" Alpines. Hitler himself was later to downplay the importance of Nordicism for this very reason. The standard tripartite model placed most of the population of Hitler's Germany in the Alpine category, especially after the Anschluss. By 1939 Hitler abandoned Nordicist rhetoric in favour of the idea that the German people as a whole were united by distinct 'spiritual' qualities.

Related Topics:
Germany - Adolf Hitler - Aryan - Racial Hygiene - Holocaust - Anschluss

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After the second World War, the categorization of peoples into "superior" and "inferior" groups fell even further out of political and scientific favor. 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 Origins of Race (1962), but eventually became obsolete.

Related Topics:
Second World War - Carleton Coon

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