Polako's guide to the "Nordic" race in Poland

[Polak]

Ever since anthropologists began dividing Europe into seperate physical types, it has been noted that northern Poland was part of the realm of the so called Nordic race. (In this instance the term Nordic is an anthropological one - not a political, linguistic, or ethnic one.)

Nordic theory, however, further subdivided Caucasoids into three groups: Nordics (who inhabited Scandinavia, northern Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Flanders, parts of northern France, and northern Poland), Alpines (whose territory stretched from central France through Switzerland, northern Italy, Austria, southern Germany, southern Poland, central Russia, and into Central Asia), and Mediterraneans (who inhabited southern France, the Iberian peninsula, southern Italy, Greece, and parts of Wales).

Reference.com/Encyclopedia/The Passing of the Great Race
Traditionally, the Nordic was said to be the tall, fair heaired, long headed type of northern European descent. In most people's minds this is still the basic definition of Nordic. However, as physical anthropology became more involved, various authors began to tease out what they believd to be the true Nordic, from a whole host of varieties possesing admixture from other European types. This process reached its height just after the second world war, before sub-racial anthropology took a severe nose dive as a meaningful academic pursuit.
Science has never really explained how the Nordic type formed in northern Europe. No one is sure whether the Nordics are invaders to the region from another part of Europe, or even Asia, whether they are offshoots from the earliest human inhabitants of the region, or perhaps even a mix of the two?
What is clear, however, is that the early Slavs possessed all the characteristics to be classified as a "Nordic" people in anthropological terms.

If the evidence of literary sources makes the early Slavs Nordic in stature and pigmentation, that of ostcology makes them the same in the metrical and morphological sense. In brief, all of the earliest Slavic skeletal material, dating mostly from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, falls, by ,groups if not as individuals, into one or more of the Nordic categories already found to be characteristic of Iron Age Indo-Europeanspeaking peoples.

The Slavs
As a population, the Poles retained their Nordic metrical qualities until the 16th century, when the process of brachycephalization (head shape becoming more rounded when viewed from above) became pronounced. This trend was also accompanied by a loss in stature.
It is not clear what lead to this transformation. Some of the suggestions include the mortality rate of long headed people during wars and plagues, admixture from more round headed populations to the south and east, and enviornmental factors such as nutrition.
However, despite all this, the Nordic type persisted in Poland if the anthropologists are to be believed. Coon noted that the upper class Poles were the most Nordic.

The facial features which typify the Polish peasantry are quite different, as a rule, from those found among the nobility and the upper classes in general. The noblemen have less blond and less really dark hair; fewer dark eyes, and fewer instances of brunet skin color, than the peasants; their noses, however, present their greatest distinction; these are not only longer and narrower, but also frequently convex in profile, with concave forms reduced to a minimum. Old Corded and Nordic tendencies segregate themselves, at least in stature, bodily build, pigmentation, and facial features, in this superordinate class, as do Danubian and Ladogan tendencies among the peasantry.

Poland and Russia
On the other hand, Polish anthropologists claimed that whole tracts of northern Poland were still largely Nordic.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6.../map/gorny.jpg
Source: Materialy i Prace Antropologiczne 34, Wroclaw 1961
Currently it is very difficult to give any sort of an estimate on the incidence of the Nordic type in Poland. Anthropological surveys are no longer in vogue, and the Polish population has experienced massive changes since WWII. Internal migration and enviornmental factors have surely had an impact on the phenotypic expression of the Poles.
Debrachycephalization seems to be underway in central and eastern Europe (studies from Germany, Czech Republic, and southern Poland). Height has also increased dramatically. Latest figures show the Poles to be 179.2cm tall on average. This may mean that younger Poles look more Nordic than previous generations, although no detailed data is available to back that up.
What is certain is that the Nordic type is not uncommon in Poland today among individuals. Often this is attribued to admixture from Germany, Holland or Scandinavia. However, the latest genome wide SNP tests are showing Poles to be closely related to these populations anyway, so the existance of Northern European physical characteristics in Poland should not be surprising.

Within the two broad Northern (Polish, Irish, English, Germans and some Italians) and Southeastern (Greeks, Armenians, Jews and some Italians) clusters further reliable structure is less obvious as individuals from different population samples are often interspersed with each other.

From "Measuring European Population Stratification using Microarray Genotype Data"

From "European Population Substructure: Clustering of Northern and Southern Populations"
The most common Nordic in Poland is probably the East Nordid - a tall, high headed type with a prominent nose. It is often confused with the Noric type on Anthropology forums such as "Human Biodiversity". But various so called Nordid/Cro-Magnid and Nordid/Baltid blends are even more common in Poland.
Here are some Nordic Poles, ranging from Nordic to Nordic/Cro-Magnid and Nordic/Baltid blends.









And a facial composite of Polish footballers, which is basically Nordic, thanks to Racial Reality...