Bertil Lundman

Bertil Johannes Lundman (28 September 1899 – 5 November 1993) was a Swedish anthropologist.

Biography

Lundman was in Malmö, the son of postmaster Fredrik Lundman and his wife Elin, née Björkman. After graduating from Västerås Higher General School, he enrolled at Uppsala University (1921), where he obtained a bachelor's degree in botany, geography and meteorology (1925). In 1935, he obtained a bachelor's degree in theology. In 1945, he defended his doctoral thesis on Dalaallmogens antropologi ("The Anthropology of the Dalai Lama"), and from 1947 to 1970 he held a lectureship in physical anthropology.

His bequest was the basis for the establishment of the Extensus Foundation in 1994, which supports research and dissemination of knowledge in plant ecology.

Lundman is buried in Uppsala Old Cemetery. He was an honorary member of the Geographical Society of Uppsala University from 1966 until his death.

Research

Lundman applied, with some modifications, the traditional classification of human races, but by the 1930s was already talking about populations ("stocks"), determining races on the basis of comparatively uniform populations rather than types as in older anthropology — which he described as "myopic skull-measuring" — and thus anticipating the modern study of man.

The Heimdal Association in Uppsala published a comprehensive yearbook in 1939, in which Bertil Lundman contributed on pages 26-27: "The whole thing should be that the Nordic tribes, which formed the Indo-Europeans, were acutely aware of their psychological and physical superiority and did not tolerate any mixing. (...) An element of gypsy blood, even in strong admixture, often has a purely destructive effect on an individual's moral (less his intellectual) standing. (...) Pro primo, unfortunately, eugenics can hardly get much further than keeping the worst degrees of degeneracy reasonably in check."

While working on his doctoral thesis, which included an anthropological study of the population of Dalarna, Lundman believed he had discovered a race previously unknown in Sweden with probable descent from the Cro Magnon culture, the so-called tydal race, named after a Norwegian village, where it had previously been studied by Norwegian anthropologists. In addition, Lundman has noted a difference in skull height (not to be confused with skull length) between western European (so-called Atlantic) and eastern European (so-called Caspian) populations in terms of external race characteristics. Towards the end of his career, Lundman became interested in blood types and made a population classification based on blood alleles.

Based on already known material, Lundman investigated and described Sweden's anthropological conditions and traced different types (appearances) of the present-day population to ancient groups. Already before his large-scale population survey in Dalarna, with, according to his own account, more than 11,000 skull measurements, he thought he had found the existence of a blond racial type which he called the "Västmanland type", which the German anthropologist Fritz Paudler had previously discovered and described as identical to the German Faelian races.

Some attention was drawn to Lundman's controversial description of the Travellers ("tattarna") as a mixed population of Roma and socially excluded Swedes.

Lundman was critical of the racial biologist Herman Lundborg ("an enthusiastic but short-sighted person without much scientific ability") and his contemporary colleague, the American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon ("confused systematics").

The Negroes are the most pronounced creatures on earth, a race of large, uneducated children, who are less troubled than others by any inhibitions. The Negro takes the day as it comes, shouts, talks, and flaunts his broad humor, and enjoys all the delights the moment can give. A setback literally throws him to the ground, he roars and tears his hair like a man possessed in wildest despair. The next moment, however, all is forgotten, and everything is as usual.

The sanguine temperament of the Negro contains much good-nature, and if properly treated he can be a very faithful servant. Such a nature, of course, is also an excellent slave, who, except for the occasional outburst, is well content with his lot, and even flaccid in the chains of the slave-trader. On the other hand, no higher and more independent cultural development can of course occur in these passionate children of the hour. They can, however, hastily and reluctantly copy what they have seen of higher culture, as far as they understand it.

In the 1950s, the concept of race began to be questioned and Lundman's research was criticized on principle. He is considered to be the last Swedish anthropologist to base his research on racism At least at the end of his life, Lundman "completely renounced" racism.

At the end of his active life, he was sometimes considered by students to be something of a cad. In a 1987 interview for the newspaper Kyrkans Tidning, he spoke out in favour of a selective immigration policy that meant a no to coloured immigration.

Works

• Västmanlandstyper (1931)
• Folktypsundersökningar i Dalarna I-IX (1932–38, 1940, 1946)
• Nordens rastyper (1940)
• Jordens människoraser och folkstammar (1943–44)
• Dalaallmogens antropologi (1945; doctoral dissertation)
• On the Origin of the Lapps (1946)
• Nutidens människoraser (1946)
• Raser och folkstockar i Baltoskandia (1946, 1967)
• Ergebnisse der anthropologischen Lappenforchung (1952)
• Umriss der Rassenkunde des Menschen in geschichtlicher Zeit (1952)
• Stammeskunde der Völker (1961)
• The Racial History of Scandinavia: An Outline (1962)
• Blutgruppenforschung und geograpische Anthropologie (1967)
• The Races and Peoples of Europe (1977)
• Minnen (1987; memoirs)
• Jordens folkstammar (1988)