Northern Europe

“ Servia, Hungary, Russia, have taken their definite position among the Christian powers of Europe. So have Poland and Bohemia on the borders of the Western Empire. Prussia, Lithuania, and the Finnish lands to the immediate north of them remain heathen. ♦Spain.♦ In Spain, the Christians have won back a large part of the peninsula. Castile and Navarre are already kingdoms; Aragon, though not yet a kingdom, has begun her history. ♦The Scandinavian kingdoms.♦ In Northern Europe, the three Scandinavian nations are clearly distinguished and firmly established. ”

“ Most of the Nordics are found in Germany but there are also many in the other lands of Northern Europe, such as Scotland, Sweden and Norway.
Nordics are outstanding in truthfulness and energy; action, not talk, is the Nordic motto, and hence they are predisposed to leadership by nature. ”

“ We notice first of all the commonness or community of Neolithic feeling and life, its almost monotonous uniformity, over Europe, eastern [Pg 273] Asia, and probably even far wider areas. We may easily exaggerate this. The cultures of the Mediterranean basin, of Spain and France, of the Danube valley, of northern Germany and Scandinavia, not to mention smaller, more isolated provinces, showed well-marked differences. ”

“ Our Nation is committed to promoting prosperity and stability throughout Northern Europe. Through the Northern Europe Initiative, we have partnered with other nations in the region to enhance security and economic growth in the Baltic region. ”

“ But if we move north, it can be confirmed that Northern Europe was depopulated during the last glaciation, and that people come back here approximately 10,000 years ago. A common feature of almost all the archaeological investigations of hominids of this period are stone tools in the excavations, and that einkorn, millet, spelled, and wheat were grown. In northern Europe there seems not to have been a permanent, stationary society. ”

“ The Nordic realm includes nearly all the northern third of France with extensions into the fertile southwest; all the rich lowlands of Flanders; all Holland; the northern half of Germany with extensions up the Rhine and down the Danube; and the north of Poland and of Russia. Recent calculations indicate that there are about 90,000,000 of purely Nordic physical type in Europe out of a total population of 420,000,000.
Throughout southern Europe a Nordic nobility of Teutonic type everywhere forms the old aristocratic and military classes or what now remains of them. ”

“ Among historians and anthropogeographers it is a much used commonplace that the northern peoples always appear as conquerors who subjugate the southern peoples, and that they are always the founders of states in their particular climatic zones. The Germans overthrew the Roman Empire, the Northern Frenchmen founded the French state, the Northern Spaniards the Spanish, the Northern Italians, the Italian state, and the North Germans united Germany. It is natural, therefore, that this commonplace should be applied also in Eastern Europe. ”

“ They took the Cross and went to fight the Saracens in Africa and Asia. When climate rather than culture latinized them, later northmen came and dispossessed them. The men of the north have always been fighting their way to the Mediterranean. Are Germans and Russians disturbing the peace of Europe any more or any differently than Northern Europeans have always done? Since the dawn of history, the Mediterranean races have had to contend with the men of the north seeking the sun. ”

“ The regions of Northern Europe and Northern America, notwithstanding their original opposition to man, are to-day the most fruitful of all lands in industrial discoveries and intellectual activities, but in the polar regions, as in the equatorial, the highest development never can be reached. ”

“ Every century is marked by renewal of the age-long clashes between the northern and southern races which have been thrown in contact along the western end of the line which separates the plains of northern Europe from the mountainous southland of the continent. ”

“ The other point is that each little patch of country in the south is still far more self-supporting, has had its economic conditions far less disturbed by modern rearrangements and commercial necessities, than in Northern Europe. ”

“ New cultures and new waves of migration of peoples were pouring into Europe, especially into the Baltic region now left free of ice, enjoying a mild climate, and offering an abundance of food along the shores of its rivers, lakes, and seas. The Tardenoisian culture had spread northward from the Mediterranean. ”

“ The Danish tongue of land which divides Germany’s northern sea boundary into two separate regions contains in its eastern and northern coasts the very advantages which Germany cannot find on its northern frontier. ”

“ The study of prehistoric anthropology in Russia, a vast territory, is still in its infancy. We have touched upon only one or two of the questions concerning this so-called Nordic race, which is probably hardly more than a name for a mixture of peoples.151 We must not forget that even in Scandinavia we find traces of a very early immigration of short-headed people.152 We still know little concerning life in North [Pg 200] Germany during the Neolithic period. It was probably what we should call pioneer life, where hunting and cattle-raising and a rude tillage combined to furnish support. ”

“ The north-west of Europe furnishes us an instance of a very extensive tract of secondary country, comprehending the greater part of Britain, the whole of Flanders and Holland, part of Germany, the northern provinces of France, and probably the bed of the German Ocean, at least for a great extent. ”

“ Northern Russia with Poland inclusive, being the only parts of Europe I have not visited, and being now in the extreme north, I should much regret not being able to visit those countries, which occupy so deeply the minds of all philanthropists, and which exercise such a powerful influence over the politics of Europe. ”

“ These men trained to solitude in small bands, owing to the geographical exigencies of their northern country, become the founders of the particularist or individualistic nations, Great Britain and the United States among others. Those who had gone south, driven by pressure from behind, follow the Danube to the north and west, find the Rhine, and push on into what is now southwestern Europe. ”

“ A hunting population without domestic animals except the dog pressed northward through Russia in waves and fragments, and along the Baltic mingled with a strain coming from the west, probably broad-heads from Belgium. The great Scandinavian and North German peoples followed with a frontier culture, a combination of hunting, fishing, cattle-raising, and agriculture mingled in proportions varying according to time and place. Their exact route of migration from the region of the steppes must yet be traced. But the weight of evidence favors an eastern origin. ”

“ Before we proceed to the Norwegians’ great contributions to the exploration of the northern regions, we shall attempt to collect and survey what is known, and what may possibly be concluded, about the most northern people of Europe, the Finns, and the earliest settlement of Scandinavia. ”

“ Implements, weapons, pottery; new discoveries, inventions, ideas, arts, and habits of life and thought spread slowly and gradually from these centres of progressing culture far to the northward. This was undoubtedly one important source of stimuli. But we must not overestimate its influence.172
It spread through France into England and Denmark. As time went on this northward current increased and strengthened until, during the Bronze period, the Baltic region, especially Denmark, became almost a second Mediterranean centre of culture and art ”

“ The coastal and seafaring populations of northern Europe are everywhere Nordic as far as the shores of Spain and among Europeans this race is pre-eminently fitted for maritime pursuits. Enterprise at sea during the Middle Ages was in the 228hands of Mediterraneans just as it was originally developed by Cretans, Phœnicians and Carthaginians but after the Reformation the Nordics seized and occupied this field almost exclusively. ”

“ The custom of fortifying villages evidently spread rapidly during the Bronze and Iron periods. Sophus Müller tells us that all walled settlements north of the Alps are far younger than the Neolithic period.46 This statement, often disputed or neglected, is probably an exaggeration, but may well be true of the region surrounding the Baltic. The sparse and scattered hunting and pioneer population of Scandinavia and Germany had no need of building permanent walls around their single houses or small villages. They had very little wealth to protect. ”

“ During the period of transition to Neolithic time Europe was occupied only by a sparse population of fishermen along the rivers, while barbarous hunting tribes were working their way northward toward the Baltic. The shell-heaps of Denmark are the monuments of the attainments of this epoch.
A higher civilization had already entered the Mediterranean basin. It was building houses, villages, possibly forerunners of the Greek city-states. ”

“ Thus, in Spain and Italy, the men who ought to serve the people, prey upon them, and the direct and chief reason why the northern nations of Europe surpass the southern is, that in the north the superior minds are turned to account, and in the south they have been entombed in the Church or paralyzed by titles of nobility. ”

“ The Northern shore, the only part accessible to English adventurers without encroachment on the transatlantic possessions of a friendly power, yielded little or nothing to commerce which could not be obtained with less trouble in Europe itself. ”

“ Accordingly the Northern races of Europe found their inspiration in the Bible; and the enthusiasm for it has not yet quite faded away. ”

“ So it was that the chief interests of the Pyrenean peninsula drew towards its ocean coasts; that there grew up on either side of the Channel which separates the Continent from Britain, the two great capitals in which modern activity is chiefly concentrated; that Northern Germany, together with the races which touch on the North Sea and the Baltic, developed a life and a system of their own; it is in these regions latterly that the universal spirit of the human race chiefly works out its task, and displays its activity in moulding states, creating ideas, and subjugating nature. ”

“ But Russia, that is, Old Russia round Novgorod and Kiev, the White Sea, the North Cape and Finland coasts, as well as the more outlying parts of Scotland and Ireland, were first clearly known to Europe through the Northmen. The same race did much to open up the modern Lithuania and Prussia, and the conversion of the whole of Scandinavia, mother country and colonies alike, in the tenth and eleventh centuries added our Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, with all the Viking settlements, to the civilised world and church of Rome. ”

“ It seemed like a bad dream that the peoples of the North had for so many centuries demolished and laid waste each other, tapped one another for blood and gold, rendered it impossible for the North to assert herself and spread her influence in Europe. ”

“ Christianity came by way of Germany, and so did the Reformation, the Renaissance, the enlightenment of the eighteenth century, etc., in short, for every material intellectual advancement, the North is indebted to Germany, since the impulse to every movement of great importance in the northern lands came from that country. ”

“ The nether sky opens, and Europe is disclosed as a prone and emaciated figure, the Alps shaping like a backbone, and the branching mountain-chains like ribs, the peninsular plateau of Spain forming a head. Broad and lengthy lowlands stretch from the north of France across Russia like a grey-green garment hemmed by the Ural mountains and the glistening Arctic Ocean. ”

“ As the coins afford us an insight into the relations of our forefathers towards the east, so they give us also important hints as to the connection of the North with the west of Europe. It is a fact, established beyond all doubt, that the inhabitants of the North carried on trade with the countries of the west; but at the close of paganism, this connection assumed more and more of a warlike character, and instead of peaceful merchants vast hordes of rude Vikings landed on their coasts. ”

“ To the people who live within the North, the North is their world, and to them the news of who is to be appointed to the charge of the next post down the river is of more, importance than the partition of Turkey or a possible redistribution of the thrones of Europe. ”

“ We have then traced the shiftings of the powers which lay wholly or partly beyond the bounds of either Empire, the great Slavonic mainland, the Scandinavian and the Iberian peninsulas, ending with that which is geographically the most isolated land of all, the other world of Britain. We have seen too how Europe may be said to have spread herself beyond her geographical limits in the foundation of new European states beyond the Ocean. ”

“ Lithuania and North Poland are also Nordic lands, as are the German provinces along the Baltic; but South Poland and Galicia are Alpine, as are the majority of the immigrants who come from South Germany. Those from the provinces of the former Austrian Empire are mostly Alpine, although a few Nordics came from the Tyrol. ”

“ An important element in the life of the people has been their association with the mediaeval fur trade of the Hanse, and a study of Russian physique suggests a Nordic sprinkling all over the country, and especially among the landowners; but the villagers are mainly of the broad-headed type, characteristic of the mountain axis of Europe, albeit in the better lands taller than they are in the Alps and Cevennes, and in other ways also more like some types found in the Balkan Peninsula. ”