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Helen of Scandinavia
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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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Some greeks supposedly were blond. They used the term xanthos, a term meaning golden, yellow, or light brown/auburn hair.
The greeks of today aren't necessarily representative of what the greeks back then looked like.
Yes, but when the ancient Greek describe "blonde" they aren't referring to the same colors we associate blonde with. Alexander the Great's hair was said to be xanthos.... Contemporary depictions of him are with light brown or chestnut colored hair.
Yes, because a lot of Greek people have some Slavic lineage in their family history and are lighter skinned than ancient Greek would have been.
Yeah, I think a lot of people underestimate how blonde some Scandinavians are. I had that realization when my school went to France, and I realized that almost every single one of my classmates was "blonde" by the French definition, while I had previously thought that only a couple were blonde with the rest being auburn, light brown or chestnut. The "straw" colored hair that gets white in the summer is kinda rare in teens and adults, even among Scandinavians.
Oh, i had this as a kid. Now it's dark blonde.
Can we blame that on Varangians specifically, or is it a more modern globalization thing?
I guess it would fit better in more of the globalization category? The bulk of the Slavic migration into Greece and Macedonia happened as a result of the effects of the Justinianic plague which caused the Byzantine empire to retract.
Yes I knew a Greek girl with blonde & curly hair. Not bottle blond, she had naturally golden hair even as an adult. Obviously she was not an ancient Greek, but was from Greece.