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

Galleries and Reading Room

Library

Shop

Café

Due to essential system maintenance, online requesting will be unavailable from 9pm until midnight on Tuesday 21 April. You can still search the catalogue as usual. We apologise for any inconvenience.

We're running paid user research studies to improve Wellcome Collection online

Take part in research

<p>"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.</p>

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

Licence and re-use