THE NORDIC RACE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4771, 3 November 1924, Page 3

THE NORDIC RACE.

ADVENTURERS OF THE NORTH. AN ENTERPRISING PEOPLE. More than 6000 years ago a horde of tall, blonde, long-sculled adventurers poured into Denmark and Southern Sweden, whence they spread gradually till they occupied all but the most northern parts of Scandinavia (writes Arthur C. Brodeur in the San Francisco Chronicle). These were the ancestors of the Germanic, or Nordic, race. From their remote descendants Germany was peopled; of their blood .were Goths, Vandals, ’ Franks, Lombards, Saxons, and other nations who broke up the Roman Empire and built a civilisation of their own out of the ruins. Later still, the descendants of such of them > as remained in Scandinavia after the i fall of Rome embarked upon a fresh wave of plunder, invasion, and colonisation known a? the Viking age. Nor are the Scandinavians of to-day unworthy of their he.roic forefathers—they are still daring sailors, fishermen, merchants, .and fighting men. When they first came to the north this Nordic -stock was in the .smooth stone age, but. they were as civilised as any folk of their time. They quarried- flint in South Sweden, traded it ■ all over the. north, chipped and polished it into the finest implements any stone-age folk made. About 2000 B.C. this people got hold of bronze implements from the Mediterranean, With true Germanic eniterprise they, learned how to cast their own utensils; beautifully-made saws, swords, dishes —even razors. The skulls dug from their graves show fine heads of hair, but no beards. Before long they were making the most artistic bronze weapons in the world. From their trade with the Mediterranean they got precious metals and Mycenean urns in exchange for furs and amber. About 700 B.C. they got iron weapons from the south; soon they '.vere smelting ,their own bog ~ ‘ iron. In their gravemounds have been found Greek and Romm vases, coins, and glass. They had overland trade routes with Greece .and Asia Minor ; .they sailed down the Elbe, and Danube ; they even coasted Western Europe and sailed the Middle Sea. - One Swedish grave has yielded a vase signed by a workman whose shop has V been dug out of the ruins of Pompeii.