https://www.unz.com/print/MankindQua...-1974apr-00209
Science by the physician K. A. Haartman on the anthropological
tribal types of Finland. It was the same year that Anders Retzius
gave his fundamental lecture on the cranial shape of the Northern
people before the Swedish Academy of Science. (There is obviously
a direct historical connection with Haartman's lecture; however,
nothing further is known about it.) Beginning with the then very
eagerly pursued study of Finnish tribes (we must remember that
this was the age of awakening nationalism), Dr Haartman
sketches a very simple picture of the Finns.
However, Haartman
likens the Karelians to "desert Bedouins" (!), with brown hair,
blue eyes (!), long and high-vaulted crania, narrow faces, and
straight, narrow noses. The Tavasts were completely blond, with
turned-up noses, broad and low-vaulted crania, and also a shorter
and broader build than the Karelians. The Savolaxians were
viewed as a mixed race of Karelians and Tavasts. Although this
assumption was wrong, it continued to serve as a basis for Finnish
tribal typology until the end of the nineteenth century. It was even
elevated to a sort of canon in the works of Gustaf Retzius (son
of A. Retzius) following his travels in Finland in the 1870s.
Bookmarks