214 - The Blonde Map of Europe
Q: How do you get a blonde out of a tree?
A: Wave
According to this map – and if you really believe that blondes have less brains –a nasty fall like that is more likely to happen in the central parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, where at least 80% of the population is fair-haired, the highest figure in all of Europe.
This map, indicating the varying degrees of ‘blondness’ in Europe, shows how fair hair gets rarer further away from this core area – towards the south, as one intuitively might presume, but also towards the east, west and even towards the north.
The consecutive bands (coloured in such a way as to approximately represent the ‘average’ hair colour in each area) surrounding the core blonde area in Scandinavia in most cases don’t correspond with national boundaries, but could be taken to represent certain degrees of ethnic variation, often with a possible historical explanation.
- The highest percentages of fair-haired people can be found around the Baltic Sea (e.g. Denmark, the Polish coast and the Baltic states), making it in effect an almost entirely blonde-bounded lake. Only the German part of the Baltic coastline is remarkably un-blonde.
- Iceland was settled by mainly Norwegian colonists, and Icelanders still share the same degree of blondness with the largest part of Norway.
- The southern border of the fairer-haired part of Great Britain seems to correspond quite well with the southern border of the Danelaw, which was ruled and settled by the Danish in the early Middle Ages.
- The northern border of the 50-79% blonde area in Britain excludes the Highlands, perhaps indicating this was a refuge for the darker-haired Celtic people of Scotland.
- The darkest-haired part of France seems to correspond with those areas most heavily populated by its more ancient Gallo-Roman inhabitants, lighter-haired regions possibly reflect a later influx of Celts (in Brittany) and a more pronounced settlement of Frankish tribes of Germanic origin (in northern France and down towards Burgundy).
- Galicia prides itself on its Celtic heritage. Maybe this explains the relative blondness of that nort-west corner of Spain.
- The darker-haired area of Switzerland seems to correspond with the areas where Rhaeto-Roman and Italian are spoken.
- The blonder area in northern Italy might reflect a larger Germanic, Celtic and/or Slavic component of the local population, a similar area in the heel of Italy, way down south, is more of a mystery.
- A significant blonder-darker divide cuts through the Balkans, dividing Serbia in two (whilst Montenegro lands on the ‘blonder’ side of the border, and Kosovo on the ‘darker’ side).
- Romanian areas closest to the Hungarian border are equally blonde – many ethnic Hungarians live in Romania, possibly most of them closest to the border.
- Moldova, ethnically Romanian, is equally dark-haired.
- As is an adjacent part of the Ukraine, which for the largest part is as blonde as most of central and eastern Europe (all the way down to Georgia).
- The darker areas in Russia’s far north (the Kola peninsula) and further east (Siberia) are probably due to the prevalence of native, darker-haired peoples, e.g. the Saami (formerly referred to as the Lapps), who also account for the darker area at the very north of the Scandinavian peninsula.
I’ve no idea which year this map is from, but I suppose the larger mobility of people nowadays would make for a more diffuse distribution of hair colouration. Which dovetails nicely with this blonde joke:
Q: What did the blonde do when she heard that 90% of accidents occur around the home?
A: She moved.
The map was sent to me by Faluvégi Balázs from Hungary, and can be found here on eupedia.com, together with other interesting maps showing the distribution of eye-colour, religion, ethnicity, GDP per capita, legal age to purchase and drink alcohol and even the legal status of cannabis.
Intriguing snapshot. Just curious, but how much would this map change over time? Is the trend in some areas of Europe moving towards darker, or lighter hair.
Comment by microserf — December 4, 2007 @
I notice you forgot North Portugal… Galicia is Spain, right; Minho is North Portugal: two different countries.
Comment by Lalage — December 4, 2007 @
The italian boot is probably explained by the Italo-Normans, which replaced the Greeks there, or possibly the Lombards, a German people who were in turn replaced by the Italo-Normans.
Comment by Jor — December 4, 2007 @
It’s interesting they can draw a continuous line across the northern coast of Poland when the population there largely moved from the rest of Poland following WWII.
Comment by Brittain33 — December 4, 2007 @
On a related theme, skin color, I saw a map some years ago at a conference that showed the likely distribution of skin tones if the only driving factor were solar radiation. Of course, it varies with distance from the equator, but when you plot that onto the land masses of the world, you see what an anomalous place northern Europe is!
Comment by lichanos — December 4, 2007 @
Normans conquered both England and Southern Italy in the 11th Century. Perhaps they are the reason for the blonde streak in the heel of the latter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest_of_southern_Italy
Comment by Leo Petr — December 4, 2007 @
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There are also a lot of ethnic Albanians in that part of Italy, IIRC.
Comment by hober — December 4, 2007 @
The map looks like a complete invention … half the Caucasus is in the “20-49% blonde”, and all the Aegean archipelago too. Most of the “maps” at eupedia.com are far from exact, and some even contradict other maps on the same page.
Comment by Emil — December 4, 2007 @
It is interesting that the genetic stamp of conquest, ie rape and pillage, can be traced this way. The same can be said of any portion of the world of course including the route of Alexander the Great.
Comment by Brian — December 4, 2007 @
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Pingback by Blond(e) map of Europe « Later On — December 4, 2007 @
Nice, but Comic Sans? Ouch.
Comment by Rik Hemsley — December 4, 2007 @
you should find a same kind of map but for redheads!!!
Comment by Leonardo — December 4, 2007 @
214 - The Blonde Map of Europe « strange maps
No suprises really, still interesting.
Trackback by kwoff.com — December 4, 2007 @
Intresting but last time i went to europ it was last year France and i did not pay attention on a%of collor of the hair.
www.kszysiek.wordpress.com
Comment by kszysiek — December 4, 2007 @
My sisters and I (five of us - all blondes) are 100% Dutch. We know a lot of blondes of Dutch heritage.
Comment by Erica — December 4, 2007 @
Very interesting. As a redhead, I would like to see a similar study.
Comment by jenniferlynalexander — December 4, 2007 @
I do not think it is possible to build a meaningful map about hair color. It is all in the eye of the beholder. When I lived in Central America, anyone with “not-black” hair would be called a blonde. When I visited North Dakota, though, they would laugh at me when I tried to explain that my hair was not actually black; there is much blacker hair, but the nuance did not make sense to them.
This map seems to be derived from some historical myths and prejudices from the author. How would you get enough data about something like hair color? Especially in the age of dyes. I can assure you that, as far as Spain is concerned, I do not think that the people in Galicia are too different in blondness to their neighbors.
Comment by lbrice — December 4, 2007 @
This map is not entirely accurate. I traveled across most Europe, and found that in Romania, for example, people living in Moldova (on the Romanian side) were also light haired, especially those close to the border and in villages. In Finland, I don’t recall seeing too many dark haired people most were very light haired, not only in the area shown in the map. Same goes for the Baltic countries.
Comment by Indelible Bonobo — December 4, 2007 @
The blond part of the southern Italy is actually no mistery - those people are descendants of Normanic tribes that invaded that part after the fall of the Roman Empire.
Comment by Baxinho0312 — December 4, 2007 @
curioso mapa sobre el porcentaje de rubios en europa
curiosamente donde mas rubios hay en España es en galicia sera por su sangre celta
Trackback by meneame.net — December 4, 2007 @
So, there aren’t many albinos in Albania?
Comment by Cappy — December 5, 2007 @
[…] The blond map of Europe. I’ll be using this to plan vacations for the forseeable future. […]
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The explanation on Iceland is only partly true. We’d probably have an even greater percentage of “blondes” if the indeed Norwegian settlers hadn’t mostly been males who many took wives as well as slaves in the British Isles on their way here, in turn mixing the gene-pool a lot towards the same as is today found in Ireland (and Scotland, Shetland etc.)
Comment by Spatula_S — December 5, 2007 @
Very interesting post. Thanks for sharing!
Comment by aiwish472 — December 5, 2007 @
[…] From Strange Maps […]
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Pingback by Blonde on Blonde « Funny Emails — December 5, 2007 @
Fun, but I think whoever came up with this map has way too much time on their hands!
Comment by roodiedoodie — December 5, 2007 @
Wow. I love it. What a cool idea for a map.
Comment by 365characters — December 5, 2007 @
I think this kind of map didn’t have to be made only for fun; it could have applications in genetic studies.
After seeing this map, it actually consciously occurred to me that blondes only descend from people from one relatively small corner of the world, while most have dark hair.
Comment by Jon Q — December 5, 2007 @
Interesting, but to think that intelligence can be derived from your hair colour is just one of the least intelligent things I’ve heard.
Regards,
Comment by Ray — December 5, 2007 @
[…] curioso mapa visto en StrangeMaps (clic para […]
Pingback by ¿Orgullo celta…? | Coriol — December 5, 2007 @
This map is plain fantasising…
Take a look at the polish coast and the russian Kaliningrad Oblast, both former parts of Germany* .. were nearly all of the autochtonal germanic population were replaced by Poles(mostly from eastern Poland) or Russians(from all parts) due to the ethnic cleansing happening there at the end of WWII.
Have the goverments placing the people based on the hair colour?
You’re blond, you’ve to live in the coastal region…
Or do blonds prefer living at the coast while brown/black prefer living in the hinterland. That’s stupid!
On the other side if the data is from the years before WWII, it would also explain the split in Lithuana as the southern part was part of Poland between 1923-45
ok, not exactly: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Rzeczpospolita_Central_Lithuania.png
and after all it’s questionable, if 20 years of belonging to another nation are “changing” the peoples colour. Same at the german-danish border…
So if it should show today’s situation - it’s plain fantisizing .
If it’s based on data from between the WWI and II aside using modern borders, the data is at least questionable and seems heavily influenced by nationalism at that time.
And even if unaware of the distressful history of Eastern Europe, one may see that 50-79% blondes in heavily industrialized areas like Northwest England are highly unlikely after 50 years of immigration from all of the world
(Manchester f.e. has an ethnicity of 81.0% White (acc.Wikipedia) - this means that nearly every white there has to be a blond. Plain stupid!)
Comment by J. — December 5, 2007 @
Do the reseachers have the telephone numbers of the blondies they observed?
Comment by Коллекционер бизнес-идей — December 5, 2007 @
Interesting map. As noted, there seems some artificialness to the map, I think that it would me much improved if, instead of seeing broad categories of percentage of hair colour, we instead saw something like contour lines. There is a big difference between an area where 49% of the population is blonde and an area where 20 percent of the population is blonde (1 out of 2 vs. 1 out of 5). But the map maker had to make some kind of choice.
An interesting thing to note is that there don’t seem to be any pockets of ‘high’ blondess, surrounded by ‘low’ blondness, rather the map shows a quickly diminishing core of blondeness. I think its what we’d expect, but still interesting to see.
As others mentioned, it would be interesting to see the distribution of red-heads here. Are there in between the areas of high blondness and low blondness? Or are there spread out entirely differently?
Another point of interest is that the ligher areas of italy, as noted, are basically norman derived, and the lighter areas of england are dane derived, so you basically have the same people spreading blondeness to the edges of europe, while the germans (as franks, lombards, etc) spread blondness through the interior of europe.
Comment by nygdan — December 5, 2007 @