OLOF  EDLUND Antiquarian Bookseller STOCKHOLM

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Hansen, Frederik Carl Christian (1870 - 1934)
ANTHROPOLOGIA MEDICO-HISTORICA GROENLANDIÆ ANTIQUÆ. 1. HERJOLFSNES [all publ.].
København, C.A. Reitzel, 1924.
28 cm. In: Meddelelser om Grønland, 67:3, p. 291-550 + 259 illustrations on 85 plates.

Item offered is Meddelelser om Grønland, 67 complete ([6], 550 pp. + 87 plates), entirely uncut, original printed wrappers, spine split, upper cover worn.
Signed by the author.
Includes Poul Nörlund, Buried Norsemen at Herjolfsnes : An archaeological and historical study and Finnur Jónsson, Interpretation of the Runic Inscriptions from Herjolfsnes.

$ 100

First edition. The first physical anthropological study of Norse human bones, by the Danish anatomist Frederik Carl Christian Hansen. Based on the Herjolfsnes material of human remains found in 1921 by the Danish historian Paul Nørlund. "When the skeletons from Herjólfsnes were examined after excavation in Greenland, it was hoped that they might shed light on the fate of the Norse colonies there. They were examined at a time when biological anthropology was very much concerned with issues such as race, racial intermixture, and racial degeneration. For the examining scientists, the skeletons from Herjólfsnes did seem to support theories of an isolated, degenerate, and sickly population, doomed to extinction. Indeed, some of the results of these analyses still crop up in present-day publications"(Niels Lynnerup, The Human Skeletons from Herjólfsnes in Journal of the North Atlantic 2(sp2):19-23. 2009).

* Niels Lynnerup, Life and Death in Norse Greenland in Vikings : The North Atlantic Saga (2000), p.287-8.