Nordic theory

The Nordic race was one of the putative sub-races into which some late 19th to mid 20th century anthropologists divided the Caucasian race. People of the Nordic type were to be mostly found in the Nordic countries. The psychological traits of Nordics were described as truthful, equitable, competitive, naïve, reserved, and individualistic. Other supposed sub-races were the Alpine race, Dinaric race, East Baltic race, and the Mediterranean race.

Nordicism was an ideology of racial separatism which viewed Nordics as an endangered racial group, most notably in Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race. This ideology was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in some Northwestern, Central, and Northern European countries as well as in North America and Australia. The Nazis claimed that the Nordic race was the most superior of the "Aryan race" and constituted a master race (Herrenvolk).

In the mid-19th century, scientific racism developed the theory of Aryanism, holding that Europeans ("Aryans") were an innately superior branch of humanity, responsible for most of its greatest achievements. Aryanism was derived from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages constituted a distinctive race or subrace of the larger Caucasian race.

Its principal proponent was Arthur de Gobineau in his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855). Though Gobineau did not equate Nordic peoples with Aryans, he argued that Germanic people were the best modern representatives of the Aryan race. Adapting the comments of Tacitus and other Roman writers, he argued that "pure" Northerners regenerated Europe after the Roman Empire declined due to racial "dilution" of its leadership.

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