Northener
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Gwyn Jones has written a standard and appreciated book about the Vikings. In his A History Of The Vikings (second edition 2001) he writes some interesting things about the Scandinavian phenotype. Interesting because it’s says something about the use of phenotypes without a critical look at the background of it:
page 67 and 68
"The viking peoples who lived between the neck of Jutland and the Lofotens, Sogn, and Uppsala, were not all alike, and emphatically not of one 'pure' Nordic race. But two main types of Scandinavian have always been recognizable: the one tall of stature, fair or ruddy complexioned, light-haired, blue-eyed, long of face and skull; the other shorter, dark-complexioned, brown- or dark-haired, brown-eyed, broad faced and round of skull…
Fortunately, these picturesque notions never became the systemized and malignant myth that race has become in our own day… Much has been written about the differences of temperament between these blond and dark types. The dolichocephalic, we are instructed, is an innovator and adventurer, not easily discouraged and steady under pressure. His view of life, rational and hopeful, sees things much as they are. He can command others and drive himself. He can also relax. The brachycephalic is conservative, distrustful not only of change but of himself, quick to enthusiasm, prompt to despair, emotional in politics, personal relationships, and religion. And on him, like moonlight on water, or phosphorescence on a rotten log (the image goes with one's own cephalic index), will be found the gleam of poetry and music. The classification is too glib, but if we allow generously for exceptions not unhelpful.
The percentage of tall, long-skulled, blue-eyed people is today highest in Sweden and lowest in Denmark, which probably reflects their degree of intercourse with other European peoples over a long period of time. Certainly a community which combines the practical with the visionary, intellectual curiosity with emotional fervour, the power to innovate with the will to endure, and which can embrace the future without forsaking the past, need not complain of its inheritance."
This phenotypes darkish round headed (‘brachy’) vs light long headed (‘dolio’) are product of racial minds of the mid nineteenth century. An important figure in this respect was the Swedish anatomist Anders Retzius (1796-1860). In his Om Formen paa Nordboernes Cranier [On the Shape of the Northerners’ skulls] (1843), he introduced a new method to measure skulls into two basic races, dolichocephalic (long skulls) and brachycephal (short skulls), even though most people represented a mix of the two types.
Retzius assumed that an individual’s mental and moral capacities could be established by such measurements. For example, he argued that European Stone Age people were brachycephalic and that more progressive Bronze Age people consisting of Aryan dolichocephalics had invaded and displaced the former brachycephalic people. He carried forward the distinction into the present-day, arguing that dolichocephalics, represented by contemporary white Nordic people, were superior to brachycephalic people, represented by people of color. Retzius believed that there were still some of the original brachycepghalic people left in Europe; they could be found among the “less developed” Finns and Sami people
See: https://www.academia.edu/15504884/D...icolas_Bancel_et_al.._New_York_Routledge_2014
Arbo Stone age 'dark' vs Iron Age 'light' features
At the end of the nineteenth century the Nore Carl Oscar Eugen Arbo (1837-1906) went in the slipstream of Retzius: Arbo measured traits such as the length of the face, width of the cheek, angle of the jaw, body height, eye and hair color, and, most importantly, the cephalic index. Arbo (1897) de- scribed a pattern of geographical distribution of skull shapes in Norway with a relatively high frequency of dark-haired and brown-eyed individuals with short skulls (“brachycephalics”) along the west and south coast while eastern Norway, especially the inland valleys, was inhabited mostly by people with blond hair, blue eyes, and long skulls (“dolichocephalics”).
Arbo suggested that the brown-eyed, dark-haired people with short skulls were the descendants of Stone Age and Bronze Age people, while the blue-eyed and blond inhabitants of eastern Norway descended from Iron Age Germanic invaders. Because both groups were ethnically Norwegians, this meant the Norwegian population was racially divided, and only the blond long-skulled eastern Norwegians could claim genuine biological ties to ancient Norsemen. Arbo (1897) believed these racial differences explained geographical differences in mentality, behavior, temperament, and health, describing the short skulls of the west as weak, shy, nervous, petty, and narrow minded in contrast with the bolder, braver, and stronger long skulls of the inland valleys. By the turn of the twentieth century, Arbo was the leading Norwegian physical anthropologist.
Hansen brachy: ‘weak and primitive dwarfs’
However, the most prominent popularizer of anthropological racial theories was not Arbo but the amateur scientist and writer Andreas M. Hansen (1857-1932), who gathered knowledge from various disciplines, including geology, archaeology, linguistics, and geography, and con- structed a historical synthesis based on the anthropometric findings of Arbo and others. Hansen went a step further, claiming that the primitive short-skulled race along the coast were the earliest inhabitants of all Scandinavia, even the Sami regions in the north. The particularly “primitive,” “weak,” and “dwarflike” Sami, according to Hansen, were not indigenous inhabitants of north Scandinavia but had migrated into Scandinavia from Asia in the Middle Ages.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662332?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Edel Germanen?
It was clear in the creation of “das Herrenvolk” (tall, longheaded, light featured) that more darkish and/or round headed didn’t fit in the picture. Hansen/ Arbo/Retzius tried to retouch this from the scene or convict them to the marginal outcasts and/or Cro Magnon types. Not suitable for the “Edel-Germanen”
Continuity after WW 2
After the second world war these ideas found an uncritical entrance in the works of Carleton S. Coon (1904-1981) and Bertil Lundman (1899-1993). Coon’s description of the Borreby and Brunn are exactly the same as Retzius, Arbo and Hansen ‘brachy’:
“A. LARGE-HEADED PALAEOLITHIC SURVIVORS
(1) Brünn: (Crô-Magnon, to some extent) found in solution with Borreby, Nordic, and other elements, mostly in Scandinavia and the British Isles, also in North Africa and Canary Islands. May appear in comparatively pure form among individuals although nowhere as a total population.
(2) Borreby: Large-headed brachycephals of Ofnet-Afalou type, the unreduced brachycephalic strain in Crô-Magnon; found in solution in peripheral regions of northwestern Europe, and as a major population element in most of northern and central Germany, and in Belgium. Like the Brünn race, with which it is often associated, it occurs also in North Africa and the Canary Islands.”
http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/chapter-VIII6.htm
In stead of Borreby, Lundman used the term Strandid (after the beach or coastal zones of especially Norway).
Nowadays we see on different places, especially on the internet like Apricity, Anthroscape and also in serious literature like Lynn, Personality and National Character (1971) a recycling and mostly uncritical use of the Coon and Lundman phenotypes. https://books.google.fr/books?id=JJ...zAD#v=onepage&q=Borreby Germany Lynn&f=false
Update
Isn’t it time to get rid of the not yet cleared background of the Coon and Lundman phenotypes? I think we must throw away the inherent thought behind use of terms like Borreby, Brunn and Strandid. The “brachy’s” are not residue, archaic or artefact phenotypes, who in fact didn’t deserve to be “Northern Europeans.” We must throw away that old racial kind of thoughts.
By the way modern DNA techniques create more and more possibilities to show that genetic diversity is not only something of the present but certainly also of the past!
Sent from my iPad using Eupedia Forum
page 67 and 68
"The viking peoples who lived between the neck of Jutland and the Lofotens, Sogn, and Uppsala, were not all alike, and emphatically not of one 'pure' Nordic race. But two main types of Scandinavian have always been recognizable: the one tall of stature, fair or ruddy complexioned, light-haired, blue-eyed, long of face and skull; the other shorter, dark-complexioned, brown- or dark-haired, brown-eyed, broad faced and round of skull…
Fortunately, these picturesque notions never became the systemized and malignant myth that race has become in our own day… Much has been written about the differences of temperament between these blond and dark types. The dolichocephalic, we are instructed, is an innovator and adventurer, not easily discouraged and steady under pressure. His view of life, rational and hopeful, sees things much as they are. He can command others and drive himself. He can also relax. The brachycephalic is conservative, distrustful not only of change but of himself, quick to enthusiasm, prompt to despair, emotional in politics, personal relationships, and religion. And on him, like moonlight on water, or phosphorescence on a rotten log (the image goes with one's own cephalic index), will be found the gleam of poetry and music. The classification is too glib, but if we allow generously for exceptions not unhelpful.
The percentage of tall, long-skulled, blue-eyed people is today highest in Sweden and lowest in Denmark, which probably reflects their degree of intercourse with other European peoples over a long period of time. Certainly a community which combines the practical with the visionary, intellectual curiosity with emotional fervour, the power to innovate with the will to endure, and which can embrace the future without forsaking the past, need not complain of its inheritance."
This phenotypes darkish round headed (‘brachy’) vs light long headed (‘dolio’) are product of racial minds of the mid nineteenth century. An important figure in this respect was the Swedish anatomist Anders Retzius (1796-1860). In his Om Formen paa Nordboernes Cranier [On the Shape of the Northerners’ skulls] (1843), he introduced a new method to measure skulls into two basic races, dolichocephalic (long skulls) and brachycephal (short skulls), even though most people represented a mix of the two types.
Retzius assumed that an individual’s mental and moral capacities could be established by such measurements. For example, he argued that European Stone Age people were brachycephalic and that more progressive Bronze Age people consisting of Aryan dolichocephalics had invaded and displaced the former brachycephalic people. He carried forward the distinction into the present-day, arguing that dolichocephalics, represented by contemporary white Nordic people, were superior to brachycephalic people, represented by people of color. Retzius believed that there were still some of the original brachycepghalic people left in Europe; they could be found among the “less developed” Finns and Sami people
See: https://www.academia.edu/15504884/D...icolas_Bancel_et_al.._New_York_Routledge_2014
Arbo Stone age 'dark' vs Iron Age 'light' features
At the end of the nineteenth century the Nore Carl Oscar Eugen Arbo (1837-1906) went in the slipstream of Retzius: Arbo measured traits such as the length of the face, width of the cheek, angle of the jaw, body height, eye and hair color, and, most importantly, the cephalic index. Arbo (1897) de- scribed a pattern of geographical distribution of skull shapes in Norway with a relatively high frequency of dark-haired and brown-eyed individuals with short skulls (“brachycephalics”) along the west and south coast while eastern Norway, especially the inland valleys, was inhabited mostly by people with blond hair, blue eyes, and long skulls (“dolichocephalics”).
Arbo suggested that the brown-eyed, dark-haired people with short skulls were the descendants of Stone Age and Bronze Age people, while the blue-eyed and blond inhabitants of eastern Norway descended from Iron Age Germanic invaders. Because both groups were ethnically Norwegians, this meant the Norwegian population was racially divided, and only the blond long-skulled eastern Norwegians could claim genuine biological ties to ancient Norsemen. Arbo (1897) believed these racial differences explained geographical differences in mentality, behavior, temperament, and health, describing the short skulls of the west as weak, shy, nervous, petty, and narrow minded in contrast with the bolder, braver, and stronger long skulls of the inland valleys. By the turn of the twentieth century, Arbo was the leading Norwegian physical anthropologist.
Hansen brachy: ‘weak and primitive dwarfs’
However, the most prominent popularizer of anthropological racial theories was not Arbo but the amateur scientist and writer Andreas M. Hansen (1857-1932), who gathered knowledge from various disciplines, including geology, archaeology, linguistics, and geography, and con- structed a historical synthesis based on the anthropometric findings of Arbo and others. Hansen went a step further, claiming that the primitive short-skulled race along the coast were the earliest inhabitants of all Scandinavia, even the Sami regions in the north. The particularly “primitive,” “weak,” and “dwarflike” Sami, according to Hansen, were not indigenous inhabitants of north Scandinavia but had migrated into Scandinavia from Asia in the Middle Ages.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662332?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Edel Germanen?
It was clear in the creation of “das Herrenvolk” (tall, longheaded, light featured) that more darkish and/or round headed didn’t fit in the picture. Hansen/ Arbo/Retzius tried to retouch this from the scene or convict them to the marginal outcasts and/or Cro Magnon types. Not suitable for the “Edel-Germanen”
Continuity after WW 2
After the second world war these ideas found an uncritical entrance in the works of Carleton S. Coon (1904-1981) and Bertil Lundman (1899-1993). Coon’s description of the Borreby and Brunn are exactly the same as Retzius, Arbo and Hansen ‘brachy’:
“A. LARGE-HEADED PALAEOLITHIC SURVIVORS
(1) Brünn: (Crô-Magnon, to some extent) found in solution with Borreby, Nordic, and other elements, mostly in Scandinavia and the British Isles, also in North Africa and Canary Islands. May appear in comparatively pure form among individuals although nowhere as a total population.
(2) Borreby: Large-headed brachycephals of Ofnet-Afalou type, the unreduced brachycephalic strain in Crô-Magnon; found in solution in peripheral regions of northwestern Europe, and as a major population element in most of northern and central Germany, and in Belgium. Like the Brünn race, with which it is often associated, it occurs also in North Africa and the Canary Islands.”
http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/chapter-VIII6.htm
In stead of Borreby, Lundman used the term Strandid (after the beach or coastal zones of especially Norway).
Nowadays we see on different places, especially on the internet like Apricity, Anthroscape and also in serious literature like Lynn, Personality and National Character (1971) a recycling and mostly uncritical use of the Coon and Lundman phenotypes. https://books.google.fr/books?id=JJ...zAD#v=onepage&q=Borreby Germany Lynn&f=false
Update
Isn’t it time to get rid of the not yet cleared background of the Coon and Lundman phenotypes? I think we must throw away the inherent thought behind use of terms like Borreby, Brunn and Strandid. The “brachy’s” are not residue, archaic or artefact phenotypes, who in fact didn’t deserve to be “Northern Europeans.” We must throw away that old racial kind of thoughts.
By the way modern DNA techniques create more and more possibilities to show that genetic diversity is not only something of the present but certainly also of the past!
Sent from my iPad using Eupedia Forum
But this ambivalent attitude can be healthy is my opinion.