Post by Leader of the Barbarian Juns on Jan 31, 2006 13:23:23 GMT -5
Jon R. Kyllingstad
Short-Skulls and Long-skulls
Kortskaller og langskaller. Fysisk antropologi i Norge og striden om den nordiske herremennesket. Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press/Spartacus Forlag AS 2004. (Short-skulls and Long-skulls: Physical anthropology in Norway and the conflict about the Nordic master-race.)
Physical anthropology emerged as a scholarly discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries, and had its golden age in the second half of the 19th century. The main goal of physical anthropology was to create a classification system of human “races” and to develop theories about their relation, migrations and evolution. The method was to study and measure the anatomic features of the human body, especially the human skull. For this purpose collections of skulls and skeletons were created at universities and museums all over the western world. In addition, researchers conducted large scale surveys of hair- and eye-color, skull-shape, body-length, etc. of living human being.
The book treats the history of physical anthropology in Norway from the end of the 19th century - when this research-tradition first was established in Norway – trough the period around World War 2. The aim of the book is to put the Norwegian case into an international context and to explore the changing links between science, politics and mentalité. The connection between the racial hygiene movement and physical anthropology is treated, both in an international and a national context. Much focus is directed towards the idea of a “Nordic”, “Germanic” and “Teutonic” master-race, and the connections between racial science in Norway and Germany in the period before and after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany.
Concepts of a “Nordic” master-race circulated as a part of scientific discussions beginning in the mid-18th century. This guiding concept frequently formed part of a racial deterministic ideology which in turn tended to build upon a set of basic ideas: One of these was that the social hierarchies of the northern European societies mirrored a biological hierarchy: With pure members of the so-called Nordic race on the top of society and with degenerate and racial impure individuals at the bottom. Another idea was that the Western Civilization was a product of the biologically inherited genius of the Nordic race. This was coupled with a fear that the purity of the Nordic race was about to be destroyed through racial mixing, and that society had to stop this degeneration trough a politic of racial hygiene.
This set of ideas did not have a hegemonic position in the physical anthropology of Norway or other northern European countries. Many leading physical anthropologists had a liberal view of race relations, and used scientific arguments in their fight against this kind of racial prejudice. Regardless, ideas of Nordic racial supremacy did circulate in the scientific debates, their spokesmen did publish their “scientific” viewpoints in scientific journals, and those who criticized them still had to take them seriously as competing scientific theories. These differing theories where all considered “scientific”: The debate ensued inside the arenas of science.
The book shows how this changed in Norway towards the end of the nineteen-twenties and the beginning of the nineteen-thirties. At this time three professional physical anthropologist were working in Norway: The military physician Halfdan Bryn, who did research on military recruits and professor Kristian Emil Schreiner, and his wife Alette Schreiner. Professor Schreiner was the leader of the Institute for Anatomy at the University of Oslo, and did most of his research on the skeletons and sculls deposited in the anthropological collection of the institute. In the twenties Bryn and the two Schreiners cooperated on a large physical-anthropological survey of Norwegian recruits. After some years the friendly relationship between them was replaced by hostility. The main reason for this was a disagreement over some vital scientific and ideological issues: Bryn more and more embraced the idea of the Nordic master-race: he advocated the fear of miscegenation, racial determinism and a racist blend of eugenics. Alette and Kristian Emil Schreiner on the other hand took the opposite point of view: They declared that this set of ideas was unscientific, and that Bryn to a great degree was a dilettante doing pseudoscience.
The schism between Bryn and Schreiner can be seen as part of broader international processes. From the break with Schreiner in 1928/1929 and until 1933 most of Bryn’s scientific works were published in German scientific journals. In the same period he published very little in scientific journals edited in Oslo. More and more he became part of a network of young German scientists who had the same ideological outlook as himself. And from the mid-twenties physical anthropology in Germany became more and more dominated by this young generation of scientists who shared Bryns racial attitude. Bryn was more in line with the development in German physical anthropology than Schreiner. But at the same time he felt more and more isolated in Norway. Bryn died in 1933. At that time his status as “scientist” was seriously questioned in Norway. At the same time his reputation as a scientist grew in Germany.
www.hf.uio.no/forskningsprosjekter/ffu/Formidling/KyllingstadShortSkulls.html
Short-Skulls and Long-skulls
Kortskaller og langskaller. Fysisk antropologi i Norge og striden om den nordiske herremennesket. Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press/Spartacus Forlag AS 2004. (Short-skulls and Long-skulls: Physical anthropology in Norway and the conflict about the Nordic master-race.)
Physical anthropology emerged as a scholarly discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries, and had its golden age in the second half of the 19th century. The main goal of physical anthropology was to create a classification system of human “races” and to develop theories about their relation, migrations and evolution. The method was to study and measure the anatomic features of the human body, especially the human skull. For this purpose collections of skulls and skeletons were created at universities and museums all over the western world. In addition, researchers conducted large scale surveys of hair- and eye-color, skull-shape, body-length, etc. of living human being.
The book treats the history of physical anthropology in Norway from the end of the 19th century - when this research-tradition first was established in Norway – trough the period around World War 2. The aim of the book is to put the Norwegian case into an international context and to explore the changing links between science, politics and mentalité. The connection between the racial hygiene movement and physical anthropology is treated, both in an international and a national context. Much focus is directed towards the idea of a “Nordic”, “Germanic” and “Teutonic” master-race, and the connections between racial science in Norway and Germany in the period before and after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany.
Concepts of a “Nordic” master-race circulated as a part of scientific discussions beginning in the mid-18th century. This guiding concept frequently formed part of a racial deterministic ideology which in turn tended to build upon a set of basic ideas: One of these was that the social hierarchies of the northern European societies mirrored a biological hierarchy: With pure members of the so-called Nordic race on the top of society and with degenerate and racial impure individuals at the bottom. Another idea was that the Western Civilization was a product of the biologically inherited genius of the Nordic race. This was coupled with a fear that the purity of the Nordic race was about to be destroyed through racial mixing, and that society had to stop this degeneration trough a politic of racial hygiene.
This set of ideas did not have a hegemonic position in the physical anthropology of Norway or other northern European countries. Many leading physical anthropologists had a liberal view of race relations, and used scientific arguments in their fight against this kind of racial prejudice. Regardless, ideas of Nordic racial supremacy did circulate in the scientific debates, their spokesmen did publish their “scientific” viewpoints in scientific journals, and those who criticized them still had to take them seriously as competing scientific theories. These differing theories where all considered “scientific”: The debate ensued inside the arenas of science.
The book shows how this changed in Norway towards the end of the nineteen-twenties and the beginning of the nineteen-thirties. At this time three professional physical anthropologist were working in Norway: The military physician Halfdan Bryn, who did research on military recruits and professor Kristian Emil Schreiner, and his wife Alette Schreiner. Professor Schreiner was the leader of the Institute for Anatomy at the University of Oslo, and did most of his research on the skeletons and sculls deposited in the anthropological collection of the institute. In the twenties Bryn and the two Schreiners cooperated on a large physical-anthropological survey of Norwegian recruits. After some years the friendly relationship between them was replaced by hostility. The main reason for this was a disagreement over some vital scientific and ideological issues: Bryn more and more embraced the idea of the Nordic master-race: he advocated the fear of miscegenation, racial determinism and a racist blend of eugenics. Alette and Kristian Emil Schreiner on the other hand took the opposite point of view: They declared that this set of ideas was unscientific, and that Bryn to a great degree was a dilettante doing pseudoscience.
The schism between Bryn and Schreiner can be seen as part of broader international processes. From the break with Schreiner in 1928/1929 and until 1933 most of Bryn’s scientific works were published in German scientific journals. In the same period he published very little in scientific journals edited in Oslo. More and more he became part of a network of young German scientists who had the same ideological outlook as himself. And from the mid-twenties physical anthropology in Germany became more and more dominated by this young generation of scientists who shared Bryns racial attitude. Bryn was more in line with the development in German physical anthropology than Schreiner. But at the same time he felt more and more isolated in Norway. Bryn died in 1933. At that time his status as “scientist” was seriously questioned in Norway. At the same time his reputation as a scientist grew in Germany.
www.hf.uio.no/forskningsprosjekter/ffu/Formidling/KyllingstadShortSkulls.html
