One of the most vigorous Nordic elements in France, England and America was contributed by the Normans and their influence on the development of these countries cannot be ignored. The descendants of the Danish and Norse Vikings who settled in Normandy as Teutonic-speaking heathen and who as Normans crossed over to Saxon England and conquered it in 1066 are among the finest and noblest examples of the Nordic race. Their only rivals in these characters were the early Goths. This Norman strain, while purely Nordic, seems to have been radically different in its mental makeup, and to some extent in its physical detail from the Saxons of England and also from their kindred in Scandinavia. The Normans appear to have been “_fine race_” to use a French idiom and their descendants are often characterized by a tall, slender figure, much less bulky than the typical Teuton, of proud bearing and with clearly marked features of classic Greek regularity. The type is seldom extremely blond and is often dark. These Latinized Vikings were and are animated by a restless and nomadic energy and by a fierce aggressiveness. They played a brilliant role during the twelfth and following centuries but later, on the continent, this strain ran out, though leaving here and there traces of its former presence, notably in Sicily where the grayish blue Sicilian eye called “the Norman eye” is still found among the old noble families. The Norman type is still very common among the English of good family and especially among hunters, explorers, navigators, adventurers and officers in the British army. These latter-day Normans are natural rulers and administrators and it is to this type that England largely owes her extraordinary ability to govern justly and firmly the lower races. This Norman blood occurs often among the native Americans but with the changing social conditions and the filling up of the waste places of the earth it is doomed to a speedy extinction. The Normans were Nordics with a dash of brunet blood and their conquest of England strengthened the Nordic and not the Mediterranean elements in the British Isles, but the connection once established with France especially with Aquitaine later introduced from southern France certain brunet elements of Mediterranean affinities. The upper class Normans on their arrival in England were probably purely Scandinavian, but in the lower classes there were some dark strains. They brought with them large numbers of ecclesiastics who were, for the most part drawn from the more ancient types throughout France. Careful investigation of the graveyards and vaults in which these churchmen were buried revealed a large percentage of round skulls among them. In both Normandy and in the lowlands of Scotland there was much the same mixture of blood between Scandinavian and Saxon but with a smaller amount of Saxon blood in France. The result in both cases was the production of an extraordinarily forceful race.