Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The Northman. (Portland, Or.) 1920-192? | View Entire Issue (May 27, 1920)
May 27, 1920 THE NORTHMAN 6 '«iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiJiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiliiliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiitiiiiiitiiiiiiiiifiiiiiiiifiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiitiiiiiittiiniittitmiiifiiiiiiilixtiu Scandinavia, Mother of the Blond Race A REVIEW OF THE BLOND RACE IN THE LIGHT OF THE NEW ANTHROPOLOGY. ONLY PEOPLES OF EUROPE WHO ARE OF THE ORIGINAL RACE OF REGION THEY OCCUPY. THE SCANDINAVIAN countries are the only countries of Europe whose pres ent inhabitants are of the same race as far as they can be traced. Scandinavia has been the home of the blond race as far back into the misty past as the greatest scientists can peer. The origin of the race may be the subject for discussion, but the development of the race in these countries is conceded by all authorities. Scandi navia thus has the honor of being the mother, not only of her own energetic peoples of today, but of the peoples of the British isles and the southern Baltic and North Sea littorals. We learn from history that Scandinavia, not only largely peopled England, but that Norway and Denmark furnished England and Scotland with their aristoc racy, while Sweden furnished Russia and Poland with their nobilities. What part the Normans played in European develop ment is common knowledge. They con- qured England, they ravaged Sicily, and their descendants in Normandy today are the steadiest and most reliable element of the French population. But the new anthropology ascribes to Scandinavia an even larger part in the his tory of European peoples than history her self has possessed evidence to prove. Scan dinavia is regarded by this new science as the land which imprinted upon the whole northern races of Europe the distinctive marks of fairness, blue eyes, yellow hair, a blond skin. In Scandinavia some thous ands of years anterior to historic time, a race bleached out by the northern climate, was tinted in accordance with the winters of the north just as was the polar bear. Such is the theory. It is the only blond race in the world. The brunet races of the Mediterranean, the Latin stocks as they are styled, belong to the family of white men, but they shade into the darker races of north Africa and of Arabia. The aristocracy of Spain was once fair, because they were the children of the visigothic conquerors, who originated in one of the northern countries. Geology tells us that the climate of Europe has not always been as it is today ; that at one time, the countries in the north particularly, were covered with immense slowly moving masses of ice and snow resembling the huge inland field of ice and snow which now overspreads the larger part of Greenland. In such meas ure as these glacial masses melted and retreated, could the human race extend itself over Europe. When the so-called ice age came to an end can only be con jectured. The oldest human relics of the North are a few large, roughly hewn stone implements similar to those of the earliest stone age 'elsewhere when man dwelt with the mammoth and other animals, now ex tinct or found only in vastly different regions. From a later time, but also from the earlier stone age, date a number of discoveries made in Scandinavia in locali ties where the human race existed. The most interesting of these are the kitchen middens, as they are called, or refuse heaps, which have been discovered along parts of the Danish coast. In these kitchen middens are found hearths of stone loosely put together and covered to this day with coals. Also nu merous roughly splintered, unpolished flint tools, fragments of clay vessels, implements of bone and horn, etc. In the main, however, these kitchen middens consist of scraps from the meals of the people of that time through which most unexpected light is thrown on the every day life of this period, antedating the Christian era by many thousands of years. They indicate a race compelled for sustenance to devote itself to hunting and fishing and best compared with the peo ples of a similar status found centuries later in this country by the discoverers. The principal contents of the kitchen middens are the shells of oysters and various other shell fish together with the bones of differing varieties of fish, birds and mammals, the majority of which have to this day been the most desirable game animals—deer, roebuck, wild boar, beaver, otter, seal, bison, bear, fox, wolf, lynx, marten, wildcat, etc. The only domestic animal the inhabitants had at that time appears to have been the dog.' The vegetation of the time was not that of the present. The kitchen middens have proven themselves contemporary with the existence of oak forests in Southern Scan dinavia. They belong to a period prior to that wherein the beech, the present tree, was introduced in the region. In Sweden, no middens have been found. Along the coast of Scane no oyster banks are found like those on the Danish coast, but foundations of dwellings are found exactly the same as those found in Den mark. There have been also many dis coveries of flint implements fashioned after the patterns of those found in the kitchen middens. Besides flint, weapons of other materials, have been found in Sweden as well as in Denmark dating from this early period. Noteworthy among these are the horn axes. These objects have betokened such a low order of craft- manship and seemed sc lacking in value and significance that only in recent years have they attracted the interest of the scientist and collector. They are now re garded as important because they are to be reckoned with among the earliest traces of human activity in Scandinavia. They indicate a people of the most meger attainments and that many centuries must have intervened to reach the develop ment found by history. The date of the stone age cannot be definitely fixed, but the most conservative investigators tell us that the human family was found in Scandinavia all of eight or ten thousand years ago. From relics of the stone age found on the northern peninsula, the picture of the period would be very incomplete. Fortun ately from pther sources lacking features are supplied. In the remains of the pole huts dis covered in Switzerland proof was found that wheat, barley, flax and other grains were cultivated by the people of the Alps in the stone age, and in Scandinavia there are evidences that agriculture reaches back to this period. In the surface of clay vessels, unquestionably of Scandinavian origin, have been found the impressions of kernels of grain and straw. Further, a few mills of the most ancient pattern have been discovered under conditions in dicating that they belong to the stone age. One of the prime conditions making agriculture possible is that the people have a fixed habitation. That this condition was fulfilled in Scandinavia in the stone age may be gathered from the existence of huge burial chambers of the time, many of which all yet in evidence. The con struction of these burial places of stone blocks of a size to inspire amazement makes prerequisite the common activity of a considerable body of men and the beginning of orderly society. The number of these mausoleums and their existence not far apart is further evidence of the siqq. Suunp 9[d03d oq^ jo uor^iqnq poxq time. WOMAN Robert G. Ingersoll Woman is not the intellectual inferior of man. She has lacked, not mind, but op portunity. In the long night of barbarism, physical strength and cruelty, to use it were the badge of superiority. Muscle was more than mind. Her conscience was rendered morbid and diseased. It might be almost said that she was betrayed by her own virtues. At best she secured not op portunity, but flattery—the preface to de gradation. She was deprived of liberty, without which nothing is worth the having She was taught to obey without question and to believes without thought. They were universities for men before the alpha bet had been taught to women. At the intellectual feast there were no places for wives and mothers- Even now they sit at the second table and eat the crusts and crumbs. The ages of muscle and miracle are pass ing away. Minerva occupies at last a higher niche than Hercules. Now a word is stronger than a blow. At last we see women who depend upon themselves—who stand, self-poised, the shocks of the sad world, who do not go to the literature of barbarism for consolation, nor use the falsehoods and mistakes of the past for the foundation of their hope—women brave enough and tender enough to meet and bear the facts and fortunes of this world. THE MAN BEHIND THE SMILE (Masonic Monthly.) I don’t know how he is on creeds, I never heard him say; But he’s got a smile that fits his face And he wears it every day. If things go wrong, he won’t complain, Just tries to see the joke; He’s always finding little ways Of helping other folk. He sees the good in everyone, Their faults he never mentions; He has a lot of confidence In people’s good intentions. You soon forget what ails you When you happen ’round this man; He can cure a case of hypo- Quicker than the doctor can. No matter if the sky is gray, You get his point of view, And the clouds begin to scatter And the sun comes breaking through. You’ll know him if you meet him, And you’ll find it worth your while To cultivate the friendship of The “Man Behind the Smile.”