To find the pure Nordic type at the present day we must seek for it in Scandinavia, which possesses one of the most highly individualised populations in Europe. The Osterdal, and the neighbourhood of Vaage in Upper Gudbrandsdal in Norway, and the Dalarna district in Sweden contain perhaps the purest Teutonic type in all Europe, the cephalic index falling well below 78. But along the Norwegian coasts there is a strong tendency to brachycephaly (the index rising to 82-3), combined with a darkening of the hair and eye colour (the type occurs also in Denmark), indicating an outlying lodgement of the Alpine race from Central Europe. The anthropological history of Scandinavia, according to Ripley, is as follows: "Norway has ... probably been peopled from two directions, one element coming from Sweden and another from the south by way of Denmark. The latter type, now found on the sea coast and especially along the least attractive portion of it, has been closely hemmed in by the Teutonic immigration from Sweden[1221]." Brachycephalic people already occupied parts of Denmark in the Stone Age[1222], and, according to the scanty information available, the present population is extremely mixed. One-third of the children have light hair and light eyes, and tall stature coincides in the main with fair colouring, but in Bornholm where the cephalic index is 80 there is a taller dark type and a shorter light type, the latter perhaps akin to the Eastern variety of the Alpine race[1223].
Modification of the Nordic Type.
The original Nordic type is by no means universally represented among the present Germanic peoples. From the examination made some years ago of 6,758,000 school children[1224], it would appear that about 31 per cent. of living Germans may be classed as blonds, 14 as brunettes, and 55 as mixed; and further that of the blonds about 43 per cent. are centred in North, 33 in Central and 24 in South Germany. The brunettes increase, generally speaking, southwards, South Bavaria showing only about 14 per cent. of blonds, and the same law holds good of the long-heads and the round-heads respectively. To what cause is to be attributed this profound modification of this branch of the Nordic type in the direction of the south?
That the Teutons ranged in considerable numbers far beyond their northern seats is proved by the spread of the German language to the central highlands, and beyond them down the southern slopes, where a rude High German dialect lingered on in the so-called "Seven Communes" of the Veronese district far into the nineteenth century. But after passing the Main, which appears to have long formed the ethnical divide for Central Europe, they entered the zone of the brown Alpine round-heads[1225], to whom they communicated their speech, but by whom they were largely modified in physical appearance. The process has for long ages been much the same everywhere—perennial streams of Teutonism setting steadily from the north, all successively submerged in the great ocean of dark round-headed humanity, which under many names has occupied the central uplands and eastern plains since the Neolithic Age, overflowing also in later times into the Balkan Peninsula.
This absorption of what is assumed to be the superior in the inferior type, may be due to the conditions of the general movement—warlike bands, accompanied by few women, appearing as conquerors in the midst of the Alpines and merging with them in the great mass of brachycephalic peoples. Or is the transformation to be explained by de Lapouge's doctrine, that cranial forms are not so much a question of race as of social conditions, and that, owing to the increasingly unfavourable nature of these conditions, there is a general tendency for the superior long-heads to be absorbed in the inferior round-heads[1226].
The fact that dolichocephaly is more prevalent in cities and brachycephaly in rural areas has been interpreted in various ways. De Lapouge[1227] contended that in France the restless and more enterprising long-heads migrated from the rural districts in disproportionate numbers to the towns, where they died out. For the department of Aveyron he gives a table showing a steady rise of the cephalic index from 71.4 in prehistoric times to 86.5 in 1899, and attributes this to the dolichos gravitating chiefly to the large towns, as O. Ammon has also shown for Baden. L. Laloy summed up the results thus: France is being depopulated, and, what is worse, it is precisely the best section of the inhabitants that disappears, the section most productive in eminent men in all departments of learning, while the ignorant and rude pecus alone increase.
These views have met with favour even across the Atlantic, but are by no means universally accepted. The ground seems cut from the whole theory by A. Macalister, who read a paper at the Toronto Meeting of the British Association, 1897, on "The Causes of Brachycephaly," showing that the infantile and primitive skull is relatively long, and that there is a gradual change, phylogenetic (racial) as well as ontogenetic (individual) toward brachycephaly, which is certainly correlated with, and is apparently produced by, cerebral activity and growth; in the process of development in the individual and the race the frontal lobes of the brain grow the more rapidly and tend to fill out and broaden the skull[1228]. The tendency would thus have nothing to do with rustic and urban life, nor would the round be necessarily, if at all, inferior to the long head. Some of de Lapouge's generalisations are also traversed by Livi[1229], Deniker[1230], Sergi[1231] and others, and the whole question is admirably summarised by W. Z. Ripley[1232].
The Celto-Slavs.
But whatever be the cause, the fact must be accepted that Homo Europaeus (the Nordics) becomes merged southwards in Homo Alpinus whose names, as stated, are many. Broca and many continental writers use the name Kelt or Slavo-Kelt, which has led to much confusion. But it merely means for them the great mass of brachycephalic peoples in Central Europe, where, at various times, Celtic and Slavonic languages have prevailed.
Aberrant Tyrolese Type.