ABSTRACT
Less attention than their case merits has been given to the life-history of the Scandinavian peoples as it bears on the larger questions of eugenics. The case of these Scandinavians is perhaps not unique, even within the circle of European peoples. The four Scandinavian peoples, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and, less obviously, Iceland, are in a striking degree singular among European peoples in the respect that they are and have through long ages been an area of emigration, with slight, almost negligible, immigration. The one indubitable and substantial factor in the way of immigration into the Scandinavian lands is a sustained infiltration of slaves during the Viking Age, so called, most evident and perhaps most appreciable toward the close of that period. Virtually all these slaves were of European origin, and therefore not substantially different from the native Scandinavians in point of racial make-up.
