Nordic Quotes

Helga Sigrid was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, and still had an accent right out of Wagner. She was almost as tall as he was, and as Nordic as it was possible to get without disappearing altogether whenever the sun came out. ~ Carsten Stroud

The irony is too rich not to point out. When arranging the different human races in tiers, from just below the angels to just above the brutes, smug racialist scientists of the 1800s always equated black skin with 'subhuman' beasts like Neanderthals. But facts is facts: pure Nordic Europeans carry far more Neanderthal DNA than any modern African. ~ Sam Kean

Through their discomforts Dom and Phil were missing everything of interest: the sudden strip marshes, the faces in the rock formations, the perfect lakes, the awesome måskoskårså valley grooved into the earth during the Ice Age, the golden eagle circling above it, and the views of a landscape it was impossible to believe existed in Europe. ~ Adam Nevill

A cleaved head no longer plots. ~ Old Nordic Proverb

To summarise, the design of Nordic tax systems has over time created a 'fiscal illusion', whereby the public is not aware of the taxes they are paying. One can reflect on whether it is really in line with democratic principles to raise taxes in a way such that citizens are unaware of them. Interestingly, few proponents of introducing a Nordic model of high taxes in other countries stress that such a move would require hiding the true cost of taxation from the public. ~ Nima Sanandaji

The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognizing women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale. ~ Johanna Siguroardottir

You cry because you are honest." / Nordic Fairies (Nordic Fairies, #1) ~ Saga Berg

Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in the world, and to come into your own.

Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own lives and selves. Even princesses are chattels to be disowned by fathers, punished by step-mothers, or claimed by princes, though they often assert themselves in between and are rarely as passive as the cartoon versions. Fairy tales are children's stories not in wh they were made for but in their focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one.

In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness -- from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sewn among the meek is harvested in crisis...

In Hans Christian Andersen's retelling of the old Nordic tale that begins with a stepmother, "The Wild Sw ~ Rebecca Solnit

My work is based on a tradition quite distinct from the Eckersberg tradition, a Nordic line of development that had never been clearly and consistently defined in the literature on art. This line is not a straight one; it has the strangest and most fascinating twists and curves, and includes such artists as Edvard Munch, Ernest Josephson, Hill , Hansen Jacobsen, Johannes Holbek, Jens Lund, and Emile Nolde. Not all of them equally well known. ~ Asger Jorn

The plight of Jews in German-occupied Europe, which many people thought was at the heart of the war against the Axis, was not a chief concern of Roosevelt. Henry Feingold's research (The Politics of Rescue) shows that, while the Jews were being put in camps and the process of annihilation was beginning that would end in the horrifying extermination of 6 million Jews and millions of non-Jews, Roosevelt failed to take steps that might have saved thousands of lives. He did not see it as a high priority; he left it to the State Department, and in the State Department anti-Semitism and a cold bureaucracy became obstacles to action.
Was the war being fought to establish that Hitler was wrong in his ideas of white Nordic supremacy over "inferior" races? The United States' armed forces were segregated by race. When troops were jammed onto the Queen Mary in early 1945 to go to combat duty in the European theater, the blacks were stowed down in the depths of the ship near the engine room, as far as possible from the fresh air of the deck, in a bizarre reminder of the slave voyages of old.
The Red Cross, with government approval, separated the blood donations of black and white. It was, ironically, a black physician named Charles Drew who developed the blood bank system. He was put in charge of the wartime donations, and then fired when he tried to end blood segregation. Despite the urgent need for wartime labor, blacks were still being discriminated against for jobs. A spok ~ Howard Zinn

The French are not normally a Nordic Skiing Nation. ~ Ron Pickering

Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the Cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman [the cross] is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then ... a play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll. ~ Heinrich Heine

Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement. ... The conventional big-bosomed blonde is not mysterious. And what could be more obvious than the old black velvet and pearls type? The perfect 'woman of mystery' is one who is blonde, subtle and Nordic. ... Although I do not profess to be an authority on women, I fear that the perfect title [for a movie], like the perfect woman is difficult to find. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

It was the final division of skiing into two branches. In one way, it was merely codifying a fundamental distinction with psychological consequences. The Nordic events implied fighting the force of gravity. Alpine skiing exploits it. Ski-jumping is a hybrid: on the approach run you use gravity for the take-off but once in the air you fight it to keep aloft as long as possible. The ~ Roland Huntford

The national curriculum for the Swedish preschool is twenty pages long and goes on at length about things like fostering respect for one another, human rights, and democratic values, as well as a lifelong desire to learn. The document's word choices are a pretty good clue to what Swedish society wants and expects from toddlers and preschoolers. The curriculum features the word "play" thirteen times, "language" twelve times, "nature" six times, and "math" five times. But there is not a single mention of "literacy" or "writing." Instead, two of the most frequently used words are "learning" (with forty-eight appearances) and "development" (forty-seven).

The other Scandinavian countries have similar early childhood education traditions. In Finland, formal teaching of reading doesn't start until the child begins first grade, at age seven, and in the Finnish equivalent of kindergarten, which children enroll in the year they turn six, teachers will only teach reading if a child is showing an interest in it. Despite this lack of emphasis on early literacy, Finland is considered the most literate country in the world, with Norway coming in second, and Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden rounding out the top five, according to a 2016 study by Central Connecticut State University. John Miller, who conducted the study, noted that the five Nordic countries scored so well because "their monolithic culture values reading. ~ Linda Åkeson McGurk

As The Economist put it in their Nordic special edition, Scandinavia is a great place in which to be born . . . but only if you are average. If you are averagely talented, have average ambitions, average dreams, then you'll do just fine, but if you are extraordinary, if you have big dreams, great visions, or are just a bit different, you will be crushed, if you do not emigrate first. ~ Anonymous

Alarmingly, though, on top of the bookcase there is also a family portrait of Bea with two just-as-striking blond-and-blue-eyed sisters and a pair of handsome proud Nordic parents, whose stares make me aware of the vast age difference between Bea and me, and I am profoundly ashamed to be here buying drugs in this girl's apartment. What I'd really like to do, I think, is lie down on this couch and take a nap. ~ Jess Walter

Was the war being fought to establish that Hitler was wrong in his ideas of white Nordic supremacy over "inferior" races? The United States' armed forces were segregated by race. When troops were jammed onto the Queen Mary in early 1945 to go to combat duty in the European theater, the blacks were stowed down in the depths of the ship near the engine room, as far as possible from the fresh air of the deck, in a bizarre reminder of the slave voyages of old. ~ Howard Zinn

But even among the great traditional peoples, the situation is not different: from China to Greece, from Rome to the primordial Nordic groups, then up to Aztecs and the Incas, nobility was not characterised by the simple fact of having ancestors, but by the fact that the ancestors of the nobility were divine, unlike those of plebeians and to which it can remain faithful, also through the integrity of blood. The nobles originated from 'demigods', that is to say, from beings who had actually followed a transcendent form of life, forming the origin of tradition in the higher sense, transmitting to their lineage a blood made divine, and, along with it, rites, that is, determinate operations, whose secret every noble family preserved, which allowed their descendants to continue the spiritual conquest from where it had previously reached, and to lead it from the virtual to the actual. ~ Julius Evola

Eugenics was central to the entire Nazi enterprise, joined with romantic nativist and racist myths of the pure-bred Nordic. The emphasis on 'blood' called for a purifying of the nation's gene pool, so that Germans could regain the nobility and greatness of their genetically pure forebears. ~ Alison Thompson

Let us now assume that under truly extraordinary circumstances, the daimon nevertheless breaks through in the individual, so to speak, and is this able to let its destructive transcendence be felt: then one would have a kind of active experience of death. Thereupon the second connection becomes clear: why the figure of the daimon or doppelgänger in the ancient myths could be melded with the deity of death. In the Nordic tradition the warrior sees his Valkyrie precisely at the moment of death or mortal danger.

In religious asceticism, mortification, self-renunciation, and the impulse of devotion to God are the preferred methods of provoking and successfully overcoming the crisis I have just mentioned. Everyone knows the expressions which refer to these states, such as the 'mystical death' or 'dark night of the soul', etc. In contrast to this, within the framework of a heroic tradition, the path to the same goal is the active rapture, the Dionysian unleashing of the active element. At its lower levels, we find phenomenons such as the use of dance as a sacred technique for achieving an ecstasy of the soul that summons and uses profound energies. While the individual's life is surrendered to Dionysian rhythm, another life sinks into it, as if it where his abyssal roots surfacing. The 'wild host' Furies, Erinyes, and suchlike spiritual natures are symbolic picturings of this energy, thus corresponding to a manifestation of the daimon in its terrifying and active transce ~ Julius Evola

the old Nordic element in Spain, Italy, and France has been again and again strongly reinforced, so that these lands are now an integral part of the White World. In ~ T. Lothrop Stoddard

Sven must have neglected to pay tribute to one of those strict Nordic gods. But instead of cursing Eriksson himself, Thor has done a still crueller thing and cursed the England strikers. I can only assume that Eriksson was never informed of this curse, otherwise he might have more than a 17-year-old up his sleeve. ~ Simon Barnes

As the Athenians to the Pnyx, the antique Romans to the Campus Martius, or our Nordic ancestors to the All-Thing, so the folk of Tilling flocked to the High Street for extempore parliament. ~ Tom Holt

It is said that my art has some typically Nordic features: the curving lines, the convolutions, the magical masks and staring eyes that appear in myths and folk art. This may be. My interest in the dynamics of Jugend style probably also comes into it. ~ Asger Jorn

Svala's mouth remained open. She yelped unintentionally, and blinked away a tear, confident her heart just broke. / Döckálfar (Nordic Fairies, #3) ~ Saga Berg

Nordic walking engages 90% of your body in motion, so that means you are working out the entire body. The muscles ~ Andrea Fisher

I'm an actor. The fact that I'm involved in Jigsaw, I don't approach Jigsaw any differently than I approached The Nordic in 'The Firm' or FBI Agent Stokes in 'Mississippi Burning.' It's the same deal. It's just that the effect is sometimes different. So I say, people ask me, 'How does it feel to be a horror icon?' I'm thrilled. It's great. ~ Tobin Bell

The Nordic welfare model is in many aspects a good model but it needs more of a choice for individuals. ~ Fredrik Reinfeldt

The question that imposed itself: Why me?
The image doesn't fit: my thick glasses, my stretched-out blue Nordic sweater, the student head slaps, the too-good grades, the feminine gestures. Why me?
He says: Because you are not like all the others, because I don't see anyone but you and you don't even realize it. ~ Philippe Besson

Mrs. Lindbergh declined all pleas to kiss or embrace her son, explaining that they came from "an undemonstrative Nordic race," which in her case was wholly untrue. ~ Bill Bryson

The study of eugenics had its beginning in Germany, sometime after the mid-19th century mark, stimulated by volkish concerns for Aryan racial purity. Rudolf Virchow, pathologist and politician, began a study of national ethnic statistics in 1871, convinced that the majority of Germans would prove to be of relatively pure Nordic descent. The results of his studies proved otherwise. According to Virchow, the obvious solution was to set about Nordicizing the debased German stock. ~ Jim Keith

Eugenic rhetoric thus remained dependent on the body exterior as a powerful "material metaphor" for mysterious genetic processes. The desirable stock of the "fit" was imagined in terms of whiteness, beauty, and physical fitness; embodied in the winners of the AES's "Better Babies" and "Fitter Families" competitions; invoked in books like Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race (1916), which described the progenitors of good American stock as "splendid conquistadores" of Nordic heritage with "absolutely fair skin" and "great stature"; and visualized in eugenic displays.37 ~ Angela M. Smith

Ii do not walk with alienation everywhere I go in the world. I have been to small taverns in rural Ohio, big city bars, San Francisco bath houses, and in all these have felt welcome and happy. But walking through that sunglassed throng, I felt like a Martian. I didn't hate the feeling - indeed, being a black woman in the academy, it wasn't new to me - but it was interesting. I kept wondering: where is the performance? When will the performance start? Is this the performance - me walking through this space without sunglasses with all these Nordic quasi-hipster white people in multi-colored, motorcycle cop sunglasses? ~ Gabrielle Civil

We know that these clashes with Asia and Jewry are necessary for evolution. They give the cue for the European Continent to unite. These clashes are the only evolu-tionary possibility which will enable us one day, now that Fate has given us the Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, to create the Germanic Reich. They are the necessary condition, for our race, and our blood to create for itself and put under cultivation, in the years of peace, (during which we must live and work austerely, frugally and like Spartans), that settlement area in which new blood can breed, as in a botanical garden so to speak. Only by this means can the Continent become a Germanic Continent, capable of daring to embark, in one or two or three or five or ten generations, on the conflict with this Continent of Asia which spews out hordes of humanity. Perhaps we shall also have to hold in check other coloured peoples who will soon be in their certain prime, and thus preserve the world, which is the world of our blood, of our children and of our grandchildren. Now it is just this world we like the best, the Germanic world, the world of Nordic life. We know that this conflict with the advancing pressure from Asia, with the 200 million Russians, is necessary. ~ Heinrich Himmler

Today a new faith is awakening - the Myth of the blood; the belief that to defend the blood is also to defend the divine nature of man in general. It is a belief, effulgent with the brightest knowledge, that Nordic blood represents that Mysterium which has overcome and replaced the older sacraments. ~ Alfred Rosenberg

It's not that I don't like it, it's just ... His eyes dropped from hers again, almost as if-
Jenny looked at him sharply as an idea occurred to her. Could the Nordic god be shy? ~ Katie Allen

The Amorites founded Jerusalem, they formed the Nordic weft in later Galilee, that is, in the "pagan region" whence some day Jesus was to come. ~ Alfred Rosenberg

When the game ended, Mike laid down his control paddle. "So you've met the Nordic goddess, right?"
Aria glanced up at him warily. "Excuse me?"
Mike rolled his eyes. "Duh. Klaudia, which I'm pretty sure is Scandinavian for sex vixen. ~ Sara Shepard

The Berbers, among whom even today one finds light skins and blue eyes, do not go back to the Vandal invasions of the fifth century A.D., but to the prehistoric Atlantic Nordic human wave. The Kabyle huntsmen, for example, are to no small degree still wholly Nordic (thus the blond Berbers in the region of Constantine form 10 % of the population; at Djebel Sheshor they are even more numerous). ~ Alfred Rosenberg

The music of ABBA is not that happy. It might sound happy, in some strange way, but deep within, it's not happy music. It has that Nordic melancholic feeling to it. What fools you is the girls' voices. You know, I do think that is one of the secrets about ABBA. Even when we were really quite sad, we always sounded jubilant. ~ Bjorn Ulvaeus

I was cast in 'Thor' and I'm cast as a Nordic god. If you know anything about the Nords, they don't look like me but there you go. I think that's a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that's good. ~ Idris Elba

My father's grandparents came from Norway and settled in the Scandinavian bastion of Minnesota. As a little girl in Tempe, Arizona, I daydreamed about picking cloudberries by a fjord in a fresh Nordic wind. ~ Kate Christensen

Some might argue that the reality of Nordic autonomy is that you are free ... to be Nordic. If you are a Muslim who is looking to build a mosque, or an American who wants to drive a large car, espouse your deeply held Creationist beliefs, and go shopping with your platinum card on Sunday, or even if you are English and choose to conduct yourself according to archaic forms of baroque politeness, you are likely to experience varying degrees of oppression and exclusion should you come to live in this part of the world. This is true. ~ Michael Booth

The New Nordic diet originated in 2004, when the visionary chefs Rene Redzepi and Claus Meyer called a symposium of regional chefs to address the public's increasing consumption of processed foods, additives, highly refined grains, and mass-produced poultry and meat. ~ Kate Christensen

I am naturally a Nordic - a chalk-white, bulky Teuton of the Scandinavian or North-German forests - a Viking berserk killer - a predatory rover of Hengist and Horsa - a conqueror of Celts and mongrels and founders of Empires - a son of the thunders and the arctic winds, and brother to the frosts and the auroras - a drinker of foemen's blood from new picked skulls - a friend of the mountain buzzards and feeder of seacoast vultures - a blond beast of eternal snows and frozen oceans - a prayer to Odin and Thor and Woden and Alfadur, the raucous shouter of Niffelheim - a comrade of the wolves, and rider of nightmares ~ H.P. Lovecraft