Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/132

118 From what has been said of the presence of broad-headed people of a brunette type in parts of Norway, among the much more numerous long-headed people of a fair complexion who formed the bulk of the Norwegian nation, it will be seen that the facts point to an early broad-headed brown race, some of whom settled on the Norwegian coast, the long-headed fair race of the typical Norse variety having perhaps subsequently conquered them. In any case, we find evidence sufficient to justify the inference that probably the early broad-headed people were brown. The same result is obtained by the study of the broad-headed people of Central Europe at the present day, the descendants presumably of the old Alpine brown race. The same evidence is afforded by the remnant of the Wends, whose skulls are broad, and whose complexions are more or less brown at the present day, notwithstanding their fusion with the Germans. We have thus existing in Norway and parts of Germany at the present time people whose ethnological characteristics appear to agree with those of a section of the Anglo-Saxon people in England. It does not, of course, admit of proof that the broad-headed skulls, which occur in a small minority in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, were the skulls of people of a brunette complexion. Similarly, we are unable to prove that the people who are called Brun, Brunrnan, or Bruning, in Saxon charters or other documents were broad-headed; but in view of the ethnological survival to the present day in various parts of North Europe, from which our Anglo-Saxon forefathers came, of broad-headed people of the brunette type, we can point in England to the fact that broad skulls are found in Anglo-Saxon graves, and to the historical fact that there were brown people in England during the Anglo-Saxon period, and there the evidence must be left. It may, however, be borne in mind that as brown passes into dark brown or black, the literary evidence concerning brown Anglo-Saxons is strengthened by that