The Passing of the Great Race
By Madison Grant
Part II - European Races In History
Chapter
6
THE NORDIC RACE
WE have shown that the
Mediterranean race entered Europe from the south and forms part of a great
group of peoples extending into southern Asia, that the Alpine race came from
the east through Asia Minor and the valley of the Danube, and that its
present European distribution is merely the westernmost point of an ethnic
pyramid, the base of which rests solidly on the round skulled peoples of the
great plateaux of central Asia. Both of these races are, therefore, western
extensions of Asiatic subspecies, and neither of them can be considered as
exclusively European. With the remaining race, the Nordic,
however, the case is different. This is a purely European type, and has
developed its physical characters and its civilization within the confines of
that continent. It is, therefore, the Homo europaeus, the white man par
excellence. It is everywhere characterized by certain unique specializations,
namely, blondness, wavy hair, blue eyes, fair skin, high, narrow and straight
nose, which are associated with great stature, and a long skull, as well as
with abundant head and body hair. This abundance of hair is an ancient and
generalized character which the Nordics share with the Alpines of both Europe
and Asia, but the light colored eyes and light colored hair are characters of
relatively recent specialization and consequently highly unstable. The pure Nordic race is at present
clustered around the shores of the Baltic and North Seas, from which is has
spread west and south and east in every direction, fading off gradually into
the two preceding races. The centre of its greatest purity is now in
Sweden, and there is no doubt that at first the Scandinavian Peninsula, and
later the immediately adjoining shores of the Baltic, were the centres of
radiation of the Teutonic or Scandinavian branch of this race. The population of Scandinavia has been
composed of this Nordic subspecies from the beginning of Neolithic times, and
Sweden to-day represents one of the few countries which has never been
overwhelmed by foreign conquest, and in which there has been but a single
racial type from the beginning. This nation is unique for its unity of race,
language, religion, and social ideals. Southern Scandinavia only became fit for
human habitation on the retreat of the glaciers about twelve thousand years
ago and apparently was immediately occupied by the Nordic race. This is one of the few geological dates which is
absolute and not relative. It rests on a most interesting series of
computations made by Baron DeGeer, based on an actual count of the laminated
deposits of clay laid down annually by the retreating glaciers, each layer
representing the summer deposit of the subglacial stream. The Nordics first appear at the close of
the Paleolithic along the coasts of the Baltic. The earliest industry
discovered in this region is known as the Maglemose, found in Denmark and
elsewhere around the Baltic, and is probably the culture of the
Proto-Teutonic branch of the Nordic race. No human remains have as yet been
found. The vigor and power of the Nordic race as a
whole is such that it could not have been evolved in so restricted an area as
southern Sweden, although its Teutonic section did develop there in
comparative isolation. The Nordics must have had a larger field for their
specialization, and a longer period for their evolution, than is afforded by
the limited time which has elapsed since Sweden became habitable. For the
development of so marked a type there is required a continental area isolated
and protected for long ages from the intrusion of other races. The climatic
conditions must have been such as to impose a rigid elimination of defectives
through the agency of hard winters and the necessity of industry and
foresight in providing the year's food, clothing, and shelter during the
short summer. Such demands on energy, if long continued, would produce a
strong, virile, and self-contained race which would inevitably overwhelm in
battle nations whose weaker elements had not been purged by the conditions of
an equally severe environment. An area conforming to these requirements is
offered by the forests and plains of eastern Germany, Poland, and Russia. It
was here that the Proto-Nordic type evolved, and here their remnants are
found. They were protected from Asia on the east by the then almost
continuous water connections across eastern Russia between the White Sea and
the old Caspian-Aral Sea. During the last glacial advance (the Wurm
glaciation), which, like the preceding glacial advances, is believed to have
been a period of land depression, the White Sea extended far to the south of
its present limits, while the enlarged Caspian Sea, then and long afterward
connected with the Sea of Aral, extended northward to the great bend of the
Volga. The intermediate area was studded with large lakes and morasses. Thus
an almost complete water barrier of shallow sea, located just west of the low
Ural Mountains, separated Europe from Asia during the Wurm glaciation and
long afterward. The broken connection was restored just before the dawn of
history by the slight ele- vation of the land and the shrinking of the
Caspian-Aral Sea through increasing desiccation which left its present
surface below sea level. An important element in the isolation of
this Nordic cradle on the south is the fact that from the earliest times down
to this day the pressure of population has everywhere been from the bleak and
sterile north southward and eastward into the sunny and enervating lands of
France, Italy, Greece, Persia, and India. In these forests and steppes of the north,
the Nordic race gradually evolved in isolation, and at a very early date
occupied the Scandinavian Peninsula, together with much of the land now
submerged under the Baltic and North Seas. Nordic strains form everywhere a substratum
of population throughout Russia and underlie the round skull Slavs who first
appear a little over a thousand years ago as coming, not from the direction
of Asia, but from south Poland. Burial mounds called kurgans are widely
scattered throughout Russia from the Carpathians to the Urals, and contain
numerous remains of a dolichocephalic race; in fact, more than three-fourths
of the skulls are of this type. Round skulls first become numerous in ancient
Russian graveyards about 900 A.D., and soon increase to such an extent that
in the Slavic period from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries one-half of
the skulls were brachycephalic, while in modern cemeteries the proportion of
round skulls is still greater. This ancient Nordic element, however, still
forms a very considerable portion of the population of northern Russia and
contributes the blondness and the red-headedness so characteristic of the
Russian of to-day. As we leave the Baltic coasts the Nordic characters fade
out both toward the south and east. The blond element in the nobility of
Russia is of later Scandinavian and Teutonic origin. When the seas which separated Russia from
Asia dried up, and when the isolation and exacting climate of the north had
done their work and produced the vigorous Nordic type, these men burst upon
the southern races, conquering east, south, and west. They brought with them
from the north the hardihood and vigor acquired under the rigorous selection
of a long winter season, and vanquished in battle the inhabitants of older
and feebler civilizations, only in their turn to succumb to the softening
influences of a life of ease and plenty in their new homes. The earliest appearance in history of
Aryan-speaking Nordics is our first dim vision of the Sacae introducing the
Sanskrit into India, the Cimmerians pouring through the passes of the
Caucasus from the grasslands of south Russia to invade the Empire of the
Medes, and the Achaeans and Phrygians conquering Greece and the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. About 11OO B.C. Nordics
enter Italy as Umbrians and Oscans, and soon after cross the Rhine into Gaul.
This western vanguard was composed of Celtic-speaking tribes which had long
occupied those districts in Germany which lay south and west of the
Teutonic-speaking Nordics, who at this early date were probably confined to
Scandinavia and the immediate shores of the Baltic, and were beginning to
press southward. This first wave of Nordics seems to have
swept westward along the sandy plains of northern Europe, entering France
through the Low Countries. From this point as Goidels they spread north into
Britain, reaching there about 800 B.C. As Gauls they conquered all France and
pushed on south and west into Spain, and over the Maritime Alps into northern
Italy, where they encountered their kindred Nordic Umbrians, who at an
earlier date had crossed the Alps from the northeast. Other Celtic-speaking
Nordics apparently migrated up the Rhine and down the Danube, and by the time
the Romans came on the scene the Alpines of central Europe had been
thoroughly Celticized. These tribes pushed eastward into southern Russia and
reached the Crimea as early as the fourth century B.C. Mixed with the
natives, they were called by the Greeks the Celto-Scyths. This swarming out
of Germany of the first Nordics was during the closing phases of the Bronze
Period, and was contemporary with, and probably caused by, the first great
expansion of the Teutons from Scandinavia by way both of Denmark and the
Baltic coasts. These invaders were succeeded by a second
wave of Celtic-speaking peoples, the Cymry, who drove their Goidelic
predecessors still farther west and exterminated and absorbed them over large
areas. These Cymric invasions occurred about 300-1OO B.C., and were probably
the result of the growing development of the Teutons and their final
expulsion of the Celtic-speaking tribes from Germany. These Cymry occupied
northern France under the name of Belgae and invaded England as Brythons, and
their conquests in both Gaul and Britain were only checked by the legions of
Caesar. These migrations are exceedingly hard to
trace because of the confusion caused by the fact that Celtic speech is now
found on the lips of populations in nowise related to the Nordics who first
introduced it. But one fact stands out clearly, all the original
Celtic-speaking tribes were purely Nordic. What were the special physical characters
of these tribes, in which they differed from their Teutonic successors, is
now impossible to say, beyond the possible suggestion that in the British
Isles the Scottish and Irish populations in which red hair and gray or green
eyes are abundant have rather more of this Celtic strain in them than have
the flaxen haired Teutons, whose china blue
eyes are clearly not Celtic. When the peoples called Gauls or Celts by
the Romans, and Galatians by the Greeks, first appear in history, they are
described in exactly the same terms as were later the Teutons. They were all
gigantic barbarians with fair and very often red hair, then more frequent
than to-day, with gray or fiercely blue eyes, and were thus clearly members
of the Nordic subspecies. The first Celtic-speaking nations with whom
the Romans came in contact were Gaulish, and had probably incorporated much
Alpine blood by the time they crossed the mountains into the domain of
classic history. The Nordic element had become still weaker by absorption
from the conquered populations, when at a later date the Romans broke through
the ring of Celtic nations and came into contact with the purely Nordic Cymry
and Teutons. After these early expansions of Gauls and
Cymry, the Teutons appear upon the scene. Of the pure Teutons within the ken
of history, it is not necessary to mention more than the most important of
the long series of conquering tribes. The greatest of them all were perhaps the
Goths, who came originally from the south of Sweden and were long located on
the opposite German coast, at the mouth of the Vistula. From here they
crossed Poland to the Crimea, where they were known in the first century.
Three hundred years later they were driven westward by the Huns and forced
into the Dacian plain and over the Danube into the Roman Empire. Here they
split up; the Ostrogoths after a period of subjection to the Huns on the
Danube, ravaged the European provinces of the Eastern Empire, conquered
Italy, and founded there a great but shortlived nation. The Visigoths occupied
much of Gaul and then entered Spain, driving the Vandals before them into
Africa. The Teutons and Cimbri destroyed by Marius in southern Gaul about 1OO
B.C.; the Gepidae; the Alans; the Suevi; the Vandals; the Helvetians; the
Alemanni of the upper Rhine; the Marcomanni; the Saxons; the Batavians; the
Frisians; the Angles; the Jutes, the Lombards and the Heruli of Italy; the
Burgundians of the east of France; the Franks of the lower Rhine; the Danes;
and latest of all, the Norse Vikings, swept through history. Less well known
but of great importance, are the Varangians, who, coming from Sweden in the
ninth and tenth centuries, conquered the coast of the Gulf of Finland and
much of White Russia, and left there a dynasty and aristocracy of Norse blood.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries they were the rulers of Russia. The traditions of Goths, Vandals, Lombards,
and Burgundians all point to Sweden as their earliest homeland, and probably all the
pure Germanic tribes came originally from Scandinavia and were closely
related. When these Teutonic tribes poured down from
the Baltic coasts, their Celtic-speaking Nordic predecessors were already
much mixed with the underlying populations, Mediterranean in the west and
Alpine in the south. These "Celts" were not recognized by the
Teutons as kin in any sense, and were all called Welsh or foreigners. From
this word are derived the names "Wales," "Cornwales" or
"Cornwall," "Valais," "Walloons," and "
Wallachian " or "Vlach." |
Continue on to Part 2, Chapter 7 - TEUTONIC EUROPE