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Meyers Blitz-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1932) shows a German man (Karl von Müller) as an example of the Nordic type.

Madison Grant's map, from 1916, charting the distribution of the "European races". The Nordic race is shown in bright red; green indicates the Alpine race; yellow, the Mediterranean race.

The Nordic race is an anthropological interpretation of the human phenotype. Tendencies to link the physical characteristics of the Nordic race to character, psychology, nationality or special qualities are considered obsolete to anthropology and are summarized in the article "Nordic theory".

The term "Nordic" came into vogue rather late. The Russian born French anthropologist, Joseph Deniker, referred to a race nordique as early as 1900. He defined it by a set of physical characteristics: The concurrence of fair, somewhat wavy hair, light eyes, reddish skin, tall stature and a dolichocephalic skull.^[1]

Most nineteenth-century race-theorists like Arthur de Gobineau, Otto Ammon, Georges Vacher de Lapouge, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain preferred to speak of "Aryans," "Teutons," and "Indo-Europeans" instead of "Nordic Race". Only in the 1920's did a strong partiality for "Nordic" begin to reveal itself, though, for a while, the term was used almost interchangeably with Aryan.^[2] In his Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, published 1922, the German eugenicist Hans F. K. Günther divided Europeans into five racial types: the Nordic, Westic (Mediterranean), Ostic (Alpine), Dinaric, and East Baltic.^[2] Nordic was not co-terminous with Aryan, Indo-European or Germanic.^[3] 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.^[3]

The white racial elements not fully covered by Deniker in his system^[4] of six white ethnic groups he accommodated into four secondary ethnic groups, all of which he considered intermediate to the Nordic race: Northwestern, Sub-Nordic, Vistula and Sub-Adriatic, respectively. Ripley^[5] advocated a simplified racial view and proposed a single Teutonic race linked to geographic areas where Nordic-like characteristics predominate, and contrasted this areas to the boundaries of two other racial types, Alpine and Mediterranean, thus reducing the caucasoid branch of humanity to three white races.

Of more anthropological value are subsets of characteristics that can be recognized within this "Nordic" umbrella, attesting a certain frequency and areal distribution and suggesting the existence of genetic groups assumed to have originally originated within a moderate degree of environmental isolation. Anthropologists associated with this approach to describe the phenotypes are Carleton S. Coon and Bertil Lundman.

Physical anthropology, the study of human biology, human evolution and biological variation, largely abandoned the traditional classificatory approach to organize the observed population-related variation. This was due to disagreements as to the classification criteria and the number of existing races; difficulties in drawing racial boundaries due to the graded distribution pattern of most biological traits; the lack of objectivity on the part of researchers; and wrong-doings performed in the name of race. However, the study of the geographic distribution of visible “racial” traits, such as skin color, nose shape, hair form, etc., is still helpful to study the impact of environmental selection.^[6] Instead, osteologic research flourish, as well as research on teeth morphology. An extensive database, built from studies in many countries on museum material and dental models of living patients, is now available, and has yielded broad morphological groupings that can be interpreted in terms of the migrations and ancestry of human populations (Hillson 1996:289).

The osteological, dental and cranial phenotypes within the geographic area having affinities to the traditional Nordic race denomination are still referred to in anthropological surveys as "North European Phenotypes". Modern reference to the Nordic race normally also includes pigmentation, while attempts to convey characteristics like hair and color to the corresponding subtypes are largely considered irrelevant and obsolete.

Lothar Kilian derives the European blond racial types of two main elements located in a paleolithic to mesolithic setting between the Rhine and Volga, the region associated to his proposals to a Proto Indo-European "broad homeland". The first element he identified as robust "Dalic", a continuation of Cro Magnon, and the second element as leptodolichomorph proto-nordic, composed of Brünn and Combe Capelle elements. Due to skeletal similarities to the Mediterranean types, he identified the proto-nordic element basically as depigmented Mediterraneans.^[7]

Both elements can be discerned in high concentrations of Mesolithic or late Paleolithic YDNA subclades of haplogroup R1b (typically well above 35%) and I (up to 25%), that are thought to derive ultimately of the robust Eurasiatic Cro Magnoid homo sapiens of the Aurignacian culture, and the subsequent gracile people of the Gravettian culture that entered Europe from the Middle East 20,000 to 25,000 years ago, respectively.^[8]

Related to the R1b marker is Haplogroup R1a1, whose lineage is thought to have originated in the Eurasian Steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas. This marker is both associated with the Kurgan culture [12] and to the postglacial Ahrensburg culture that probably spread the gene originally.^[9] Ornella Semino et al. (see [13]) propose a postglacial spread of the R1a1 gene from the Ukrainian LGM refuge.

The present-day population of R1b, with extremely high peaks in Western Europe and measured up to the eastern confines of Central Asia, is believed to descend of a refugium in the Iberian peninsula (Portugal and Spain) at the Last Glacial Maximum, where the haplogroup may have achieved genetic homogeneity. As conditions eased with the Allerød Oscillation in about 12,000 BC, descendants of this group migrated and eventually recolonised all of Western Europe, leading to the dominant position of R1b in variant degrees from Iberia to Scandinavia, so evident in haplogroup maps. The most common subclade is R1a1c9, that has a maximum in Frisia. It may have originated towards the end of the last ice age, or perhaps more or less 7000 BC, possibly in the northern European mainland.[14].

Within this region, small Neolithic additions can be concerned in occurences of "Anatolian" haplogroups J2, G, F and E3b1a, the latter originally presenting a clearly Sub-Saharan Afican element^[10] The virtual disappearance and discontinuity of the type in Central Europe by the arrival of new immigrants has been confirmed by recent investigations on mtDNA.^[11][12]

In the course of history some efforts were made to distinguish between a number racial subtypes according to several competing classification criteria. No agreement was achieved on the number of existing subtypes, and sometimes a considerable overlap came into being between concurrent definitions of subtypes. There has been a strong tendency to name racial subtypes after prehistorical cultures, according to the dominant phenotype that was discerned, for instance based on osteologic research. Some examples of subtypes relevant to the North European geographical area are mentioned here.

The Hallstatt type is the most common Nordic type, very athletic, mostly mesocephalic, high-vaulted, long and slender (compared to Brünn/Fälish), slightly swarthier than Brünn/Fälish, with relatively long legs and a short body, moderately broad shoulders and relatively short arms, mostly blond or light brown hair and blue eyes.

The Falid, Dalic, Dalo-Nordic or "Fälish" type is a tall, broad-shouldered, long-headed Nordic phenotype, with big bones and heavy musculature, a mesorrhine nose and short, broad face, most frequently found in Northern and Central Europe and is considered to Protonordic-Cro-Magnoid type and found mostly with blond hair and blue eyes.

The definition of the archaic Brünn phenotype largely coincide with the Falid phenotype. The type owes its definition to Coon and is still found in solution with other elements, mostly in Scandinavia and the British Isles. Specimens of this type, recovered from Brno (Czech Republic), inspired Ales Hrdlicka to his theory of a Neanderthal phase of modern man. Also Trinkhaus, an important modern proponent of the Multi regionality theory, refers to this phenotype to suggest a high degree of Neanderthal admixture to modern man. Anthropological investigation of the Carpathian Basis ^[13] reveals a high degree of isolation and local continuity here of this same type, being referred to as a Protonordic-Cro-Magnoid type. This type has proved to be strong in the Central European and Bohemian Linear Pottery populations and only lost its local predominance in the Celtic period at the end of prehistory. The type has mostly blond hair and blue eyes in Scandinavia but a range of hair colours in the British Isles including red and dark brown.

The Borreby are large-headed brachycephals still found as a major population element in north western Europe. This phenotype has been strongly associated to the very expansive prehistoric Beaker cultures. An early Celtic Taurid group in the Carpathian Basin is assumed to derive from Bell Beaker admixed with local, essentially (by early eastern contact gracialized) Protonordic-Cro-Magnoid types.

Other types associated to the Nordic race appear with denominations like Keltid, Baltid, Anglo-Saxon and Trønder.^{[citation needed]}

The Borreby phenotype is closely related to the people of the Beaker culture and as such, to the so-called Beaker problem.^[14] Beaker people appeared to be of a different physical type than those earlier populations in the same geographic areas. The spread of this prehistoric culture to virtually the whole of western and central Europe was accompanied by the appearance of this tall, heavy boned and brachycephalic physical type in places as dispersed as northern Africa, Spain, England and Slovakia. The early studies on the Beakers which were based on the analysis of their skeletal remains, were craniometric. Though the origin of the Beaker people was still of disputed, this studies were in line with archeological discoveries linking Beaker culture to new farming techniques, mortuary practices, copper-working skills, and other cultural innovations (Harrison 1980). Subsequent to the discovery of cultural continuity ^[15] it became established the most likely origin of this culture was located in the Netherlands (J. P. Mallory,EIEC p. 53). However, the metric research on skeletal remains, once decisive in proving this migrationst theory, became subject to severe criticism. New studies showed metrics like brachycephaly, size and robustness to be subject to environmental and cultural influences. This has been confirmed by studies on the Dutch that throughout time, though currently known for being the largest people of the world, showed a remarkable variation in average length in comparison to other people.^[16][17] Thus, surviving traits, like more than average length, robustness or high degree of brachycephaly, would be due to surviving favorable environmental conditions rather than genetics. The recognition of "plasticity" of the human skeleton resulted into a rejection of the "roundheadedness" of Beaker people to be a clear indication of their external origins. The trend towards brachycephaly was found throughout north-west Europe in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, including areas that did not undergo Beaker settlement, thus leading to the conclusion that "cranid form is not genetically determined, and that it might alter through time by mechanisms other than those of microevolution" (Neil Brodie 1994: 71). Moreover, Brodie speculated that Neolithic longheaded cranial morphology was influenced by cold, damp conditions. During the early Bronze Age (2480 cal BC- 1450 cal BC), the climate was drier and climatic improvement could have lead to the gradual (brachycephal) increase in the Cranial Index which occurred in northwestern Europe during the Neolithic and early Bronze Age (Brodie 1994: 77-78). According to this view the Beaker people emerged as an environmental phenotype that can be fully derived from the general physical type of the people of Northern Europe originally surrounding them. Also non-metrical research concerning the Beaker people in Britain^[14], less prone to criticism against the influence of genetics and taking into consideration a genetic "threshold" towards the expresion of a particular physical trait at certain environmental conditions (Hauser and De Stefàno 1989:4-5), led to ambiguous results, on the one hand pointing to the direction of immigration and on the other hand failing to provide conclusive evidence of the arrival of people of another genetical type.

To the contrary, studies in geographic regions further away from the supposed Beaker culture homelands, like those concerning the Carpathian Basin^[13], are less scrupulous in identifying marked racial differences with the original inhabitants.

• Nordic theory
• Nordish race