It's what the Vikings did

[Toddy]

The bones that we have indicate that they were of the same size as everyone else Not pygmies. If you look at the carvings (there's one with a man on horseback drinking from a horn, for instance) the riders dwarf the horses….even if they are more likely ponies.http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...erlemno_Church_Yard_-_Battle_Scene_Detail.jpg
Not even small people by the looks of things.

That said….think types, British types I mean, and we all fall into those categories.
Fair skinned, or Brythonic….and we're such a mix that both come up in the same family. One of my sons is as fair as I am while the other tans easily. Both have very dark hair though, but both grow red in their beards…..yet the last known red head in the family was my great grandpa.
My son is six foot tall, I'm 5'2". If someone only saw me they'd say that we were small people is what I'm trying to say.
Bantam regiments were formed because there were so many men that the British army would otherwise refuse….yet there aren't near as many nowadays. Better nutrition apparently.

Complex thing is humanity

M

 

[boatman]

Isle of Man Fencibles took up more room on the parade ground than any other regiment in the British Army because although not tall they were very broad-shouldered.

Finished the second day and it shouldn't be but it is always tiring when in reality one isn't doing that much.

OK, pass on the religion but not one person has commented on the slight irony of casting chocolate Thor's Hammers over Easter, candydly.

 

[Goatboy]

I did touch on it in my first post as I thought it was funny at the time. So saying pagan memes and items have been blended with Christianity for a long time.

 

[Tengu]

I was wondering on the significance of Chocolate in Viking times, myself.

(Of course they bought it off Moorish traders, didnt they? Or else the Skraelings.)

Dark folk with oblique eyes would be Saami, wouldnt they?

 

[Goatboy]

I was wondering on the significance of Chocolate in Viking times, myself.

(Of course they bought it off Moorish traders, didnt they? Or else the Skraelings.)

Dark folk with oblique eyes would be Saami, wouldnt they?

And maybe as it's Easter the Norse could make little Choccy raven squabs instead of choccy chicks?

 

[xylaria]

Isle of Man Fencibles took up more room on the parade ground than any other regiment in the British Army because although not tall they were very broad-shouldered.

Finished the second day and it shouldn't be but it is always tiring when in reality one isn't doing that much.

OK, pass on the religion but not one person has commented on the slight irony of casting chocolate Thor's Hammers over Easter, candydly.

Well the easter bunny was there in the stable with the three wise men hiding from hordes of pictish pigmies. Crickey everyone knows that as fact. And they all ate chocolate reindeer from lidl. All true.

It is funny the nonsense that get presumed about the past. Thinking about and checking stuff on google scots islands where on average a bit shorter, but then there is a natural selection to smaller people in restricted communities. A smaller framed woman would have a better survival baring children with a smaller male than a larger framed male. In a small community it would only take a handful of smaller super breeders to make an islands population shorter on average. I fell into that trap of thinking every midgety scot was from pictic genes, it is like thinking that being ginger is "celt" where genetically there is no such group.

 

[nic a char]

"the last known red-head in the family was my great grandpa" - often skips a generation or more - as with me- tho it's long gone lol!

 

[nic a char]

"Yes they were called the "Whereami" tribe and lived among the tall grass areas in Sutherland."
Originally named the "Fekawi" tribe, they sailed up from Africa many aeons ago in reed boats, to the delight of anthropologists...
Some of my forebears were supposedly Rannoch tinkers

 

[Toddy]

"the last known red-head in the family was my great grandpa" - often skips a generation or more - as with me- tho it's long gone lol!

I knew it was there, and I knew that my husband too grows red in his beard, and I fretted a bit when I was pregnant in case I had a redheaded one in a family of very dark haired people. The wee redhead would ay get the blame simply because he'd be noticeable.
Wait and we'll see, and one of my sons will have a redheaded one and everyone'll wonder where that came from I like the red hair, just that it'd look a bit odd in this family of all dark.

M

 

[Wayland]

Isle of Man Fencibles took up more room on the parade ground than any other regiment in the British Army because although not tall they were very broad-shouldered.

Finished the second day and it shouldn't be but it is always tiring when in reality one isn't doing that much.

OK, pass on the religion but not one person has commented on the slight irony of casting chocolate Thor's Hammers over Easter, candydly.

I didn't think it was any more ironic than naming a Christian festival after a Germanic Goddess.

One of the inevitable compromises made in re-enactment and living history to accommodate the public and site management requirements. Like having to use fire boxes on archaeologically sensitive sites.

 

[sandbender]

Could the shortness of the Pictish people be down to a poor diet? Japanese folks, historically shorter than most now grow taller because of the ready availability of beef and pork that earlier generations didn't have.

"...Healthiest dog is the mongrel, maybe it's a good thing to get the gene pool stirred up a bit on occasion..."

A wander around the streets of Porto or São Paulo adds strength to that argument, generations of traders, slaves and immigrants have produced a remarkably beautiful people.

 

[Toddy]

We know that when the Romans tried to conquer Caledonia that they burnt the crops. We have evidence for that burning; we know that they harried and herried everywhere they went…..and complained about what was really guerrilla tactics used against them. That could well be a time of extreme food shortage in a people who were used to an agricultural food supply.

bit of a supposition, but not without some foundation.

M

 

[sandbender]

We know that when the Romans tried to conquer Caledonia that they burnt the crops. We have evidence for that burning; we know that they harried and herried everywhere they went…..and complained about what was really guerrilla tactics used against them. That could well be a time of extreme food shortage in a people who were used to an agricultural food supply.

bit of a supposition, but not without some foundation.

M

Not unlike the Tudors in Ireland, scorched earth warfare very quickly leads to famine.

"..In those late wars in Munster; for notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they could have been able to stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the wood and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked Anatomies [of] death, they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat of the carrions, happy where they could find them, yea, and one another soon after, in so much as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal; that in a short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man or beast.."

Edmund Spenser

 

[xylaria]

We know that when the Romans tried to conquer Caledonia that they burnt the crops. We have evidence for that burning; we know that they harried and herried everywhere they went…..and complained about what was really guerrilla tactics used against them. That could well be a time of extreme food shortage in a people who were used to an agricultural food supply.

bit of a supposition, but not without some foundation.

M

Supposition maybe, but if they just turned up with wine, olive oil and a road building program the locals might of been less motivated to wage warfare. It is recurrent theme that imperialist invaders moan about the terrorist activities of locals that they have made deprived of food and culture.

 

[boatman]

Toddy's point about those with boats getting about is well made. Not unusual for a Cornish fisherman to have a wife from, say, Brittany rather than from a farming village a bit inland in Cornwall. Quite possibly the same thing applied across the North Sea where in the prehistoric past their shores facing this sea were connected by ships. In the Middle Ages it was not unusual for different ports to have mutual arrangements and rivalries regardless of their kings' policies.

 

[Toddy]

If instead of looking at a map conventionally, positioned North to South, but turn it so that our East coast takes precedence, it's suddenly apparant just how riven our islands are with river valleys and estuaries……and every one of those is a direct route to and from the hinterlands…..and all those East coast ones face the major continental trading areas. Masses of trading, masses of contacts, lots of people movement, and ideas and connections, and language too. We're not very adept at other tongues in the UK now, but traders kind of have to be, especially in the past. There are a tremendous number of words that are familiar in Dutch and the old Flanders areas to Scots and English. Some lexicologists postulate that there was a North Sea language, just as there appears to have been an Irish Sea one.
Trading networks, especially water transport ones, are much under researched, I reckon.

I don't know why turning the map makes it clearer but for some reason it works.

atb,
M

 

[boatman]

I am one of those thinking there could have been a North Sea language, Ingvaeonic perhaps?

 

[boatman]

Sorry, wrong thread