The Norman Race

tall, dark and handsome..England couldn’t resist

One of the most vigorous Nordic elements in France, England and America was contributed by the Normans, and its influence on the development of these countries cannot be ignored. The descendants of the Danish and Norse Vikings who settled in Normandy as Teutonic-speaking heathens, and who as Normans crossed over to Saxon England and conquered it in 1066, are among the finest and noblest examples of the Nordic race. Their only rivals in these characteristics were the early Goths.

This Norman strain, while purely Nordic, seems to have been radically different in its mental make-up, and to some extent its physical detail, from the Saxons of England, and also from the kindred Scandinavians on the continent.

The Normans seem to have been a ‘fine race,’ to use a French idiom, and are often characterized by a tall, slender figure, proud bearing and clearly marked features of classic Greek regularity. The type is seldom extremely blond, and is often dark. These Latinized Vikings were and are animated by a restless nomadic energy and by a fierce aggressiveness. They played a brilliant role during the twelfth and following centuries, but later on the continent this strain ran out.

The type is still very common among the English of good families, and especially among hunters, explorers, navigators, adventurers, and officers of lesser rank in the British army. These later-day Normans are the natural rulers and administrators, and it is to this type that England largely owes her extraordinary ability to govern justly and firmly the lower races. This Norman blood occurs often among the native [Anglo] Americans, but with the changing social condition and the filling up of the waste of the earth, it is doomed for a speedy extinction.

Madison Grant “Passing of the Great Race” (1916)