Map Info & Chart : The Blonde vs. Brunette Map of Europe
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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.
https://i.redd.it/pw1hnf23tut21.png
* 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](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1998/05/icelands-blond-ambition), 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks) of Germanic origin (in northern France and down towards Burgundy).
* Galicia prides itself on its [Celtic heritage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallaeci). Maybe this explains the relative blondness of that north-west corner of Spain.
* The darker-haired area of Switzerland seems to correspond with the areas where [Rhaeto-Roman](http://official-swiss-national-languages.all-about-switzerland.info/rumantsch-language.html) 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people), who also account for the darker area at the very north of the Scandinavian peninsula.
By Elbitriq
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