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We, the founding members of the SNPA, are three university students who have taken the initiative to create and maintain a physical-anthropological website in the interest of learning and sharing. We hope to unearth as much as possible of what has previously been written on the subject of Northern European physical anthropology, and to overlay this information with recent findings in such blossoming fields as population genetics. The hypotheses advanced by the SNPA concerning the nature and phylogeny of human biodiversity rely greatly on research done prior to 1950. The interpretations set forth by the SNPA are not intended to be taken at face value, nor are they necessarily precise; they are temporary deductions, and should be treated as such. This website is intended as a resource, not a source. The SNPA is not a political medium; the
SNPA should not
be treated as an instrument of any form of racial prejudice. The history of human biodiversity in Northern Europe is as complex and historically abstruse as any. The use of a single overarching term such as Nordish in an attempt to capture the span of Northern European variation might seem an unwarranted move, and even internally contradictory with regard to the SNPA's acknowledgement of certain phylogenetic associations that do not necessarily comply with the notion of such a unity, but as a focal device, the use of a Nordish category is nevertheless in our interest. The concept is convenient for the purposes of the SNPA, namely to shed light on previous research into the physical anthropology of Northern Europe, and to make further inquiries. A few points which should help to explain this initiative: 1) Northern Europe must be regarded as unique in its
particular ensemble of human variation, and is therefore interesting.
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