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May 10, 2002

The Asnem Award

Asnem is "Mensa" spelled backwards. The Asnem Award is given to members of our society who exhibit heroic levels of stupidity. I received a nomination this month from Corin Marshall who comes from some unknown and mysterious place out there in cyberspace. (Hey, people, when you send me e-mail, please let me know where you're from!)

Corin nominates James Elliot of Long Beach, California, for the award. According to reports, Mr. Elliot was in the process of robbing a bank when he attempted to fire his pistol. The gun did not fire when he pulled the trigger, however. Mr. Elliot then did what anyone of Asnem-level intelligence would do: He looked straight down the barrel of the gun and pulled the trigger again.

The second time, the gun worked quite nicely.

So to James Elliot, we posthumously award this month's Asnem Award. Mr. Elliot, if they have the Internet in the afterlife and you are able to read this, congratulations.

And thanks Corin for the nomination.

May 17, 2002

How Big Were the Vikings?

Corin kindly wrote a second time in response to my inquiry about where he was from... with an extremely important question:

Dave,

I'm from Brixton, London, and am 16. I happened upon your site in quite an unusual way. My friend claimed that the average height of Vikings was about 8 foot and I thought this was absolute BS so I went on the net to disprove him and typed "Vikings height ancient" into Google. (I had to put "ancient" in there because I kept on getting results for an American football team or something.)

Among many sites made by people who spend their weekends dressing up as Vikings and going out sailing and having mock battles, there you were!

I found you're piece on history, the founding of Rome, etc., very amusing so I browsed through your site.

Keep up the good work,
Corin

P.S. I don't suppose you know what the average height of Vikings was do you?

Thanks for your e-mail, Corin.

First of all, stay away from people who dress up like Vikings on the weekend. They're weird.

Secondly, there is no way the Vikings could have been eight feet tall. They were actually probably closer to five or five and a half feet.

The average Scandinavian male today is probably (I am guessing) around six feet and maybe an inch or two. Because of different nutrition in the Viking era (793 to 1066 AD) people were much shorter then. Bishop Absalon, the guy who founded Copenhagen in 1167, was six-foot-four and he was probably considered a freak of nature for being so tall.

Why do people today think the Vikings were so huge? Probably thanks to Hollywood film producers, most of whom have never met a Viking.