Measuring the master race : physical anthropology in Norway, 1890-1945 / Jon Røyne Kyllingstad.

  • Kyllingstad, Jon Røyne.
Date:
[2014], ©2014
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Measuring the master race : physical anthropology in Norway, 1890-1945 / Jon Røyne Kyllingstad. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection.

About this work

Description

"The notion of a superior 'Germanic' or 'Nordic' race was a central theme in the ideology of the Nazis. But it was also a commonly accepted idea in the early twentieth century, and an actual scientific concept originating from anthropological research on the physical characteristics of Europeans. The Scandinavian Peninsula was considered to be the historical cradle and the core area of this 'master race'. This book investigates the role played by Scandinavian scholars in inventing this so-called superior race, and discusses how this concept put its stamp on Norwegian physical anthropology, prehistory, national identity, and on the Norwegian eugenics movement. It also explores the decline and scientific disputation of these ideas in the 1930s as they came to be associated with the 'genetic cleansing' of Nazi Germany. This is the first comprehensive study on Norwegian physical anthropology, and its findings shed new light on current political and scientific debates about race across the globe."--Publisher's website.

Publication/Creation

Cambridge : Open Book Publishers, [2014], ©2014.

Physical description

1 online resource (xxii, 248 pages) : illustrations

Notes

A reworked and expanded English version of the original Norwegian: Kortskaller og langskaller : fysisk antropologi i Norge og striden om det nordiske herremennesket. Oslo : SAP, 2004.
Available through Open Book Publishers.

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Open access resource providing free access.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). For more detailed information consult the publishers website.

Contents

List of illustrations -- Foreword -- Introduction -- 1. The origin of the long-skulled Germanic race -- 2. The Germanic race and Norwegian nationalism -- 3. The Germanic race and Norwegian anthropology, 1880-1910 -- 4. Norwegian nationhood and the Germanic race, 1890-1910 -- 5. Racial hygiene and the Nordic race, 1900-1933 -- 6. Halfdan Bryn and the Nordic race -- 7. The Schreiners and the science of race -- 8. From collaboration to conflict : the racial survey of 1923-1929 -- 9. Science and ideology, 1925-1945 -- 10. The fall of the Nordic master race -- Selected bibliography -- Index.

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliography (p. [233]-247).

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ISBN

  • 9781909254565
  • 9781909254572
  • 9781909254589