The Nordic race was one of the three sub-races into which the Caucasian race was divided by anthropologists using scientific racism in the first half of the 20th century. (The three sub-types being Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean.) People of the Nordic type were described as having blonde or brown hair, light colored eyes, fair skin and tall stature, and were considered to predominate in countries of Central and Northern Europe. The notion is today considered ideological rather than scientific by most.
Nordicism (also "Nordic theory") is an ideology of racial supremacy that claims that a Nordic race, within the greater Caucasian race, constituted a master race.
This ideology was popular in the late-19th and early 20th centuries in some Central and Northern European countries as well as North America, and achieved mainstream success throughout Germany via National Socialism during the Third Reich.
Read more about Nordic Race: Defining Characteristics, Nordicism
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“There are times when they seem so small! And then again, although they never seem large, there is a vastness behind them, a past of indefinite complexity and marvel, an amazing power of absorbing and assimilating, which forces one to suspect some power in the race so different from our own that one cannot understand that power. And ... whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask oneself: “Well, who are the best people to live with?””
—Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904)