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ABSTRACT
Nordicism promoted a particular racial-bodily aesthetic, that of the tall, blond, blue-eyed individual, and promoted the view that the Nordic race was responsible for all the major achievements of humanity. However, modern “scientific” race theory recognized that there were no pure races, and few racially pure individuals. This complicated the presentation of racial ideas in the public sphere. In inter-war Germany and during the Nazi period, racial imagery played a crucial role in mediating between academic race theory and popular racial propaganda, between racial elitism and political populism. At the macro-historical level, this ideal human aesthetic appears in post-Second World War advertising and in Hollywood movies, and in the imagery associated with social-democratic Scandinavia. Nordic iconography today indexes racist elitism, idealized figures in the social imaginary, and egalitarianism.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to express his gratitude to the organizers of the Elite Discourse Roundtable, Schloss Hüningen, Bern, Switzerland, 6–7 April 2016.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Christopher Hutton http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0861-4168
Notes on contributor
Christopher Hutton is chair professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. His research concerns the history of linguistics, in particular the relationship between linguistics and race theory, and the politics of language and interpretation in the context of the law.