Thorkell the Tall | Biography, History, & Facts | Britannica.
"The tallest Viking who ever lived in the world was an Icelander named Johann Petursson. He stood 7 feet 7 inches (231.14 cm) tall and was born in Dalvík, Iceland on 9 February 1913 and was known as "The Viking Giant" He passed away in his home town Dalvík in 1984.
"The examination of skeletons from different localities in Scandinavia reveals that the average height of the Vikings was a little less than that of today: men were about 5 ft 7-3/4 in. tall and women 5 ft 2-1/2 in.
How tall were the Vikings? The average Viking was 8-10 cm (3-4 inches) shorter than we are today. The skeletons that the archaeologists have found, reveals, that a man was around 172 cm tall (5.6 ft), and a woman had an average height of 158 cm (5,1 ft).
Would the Vikings Be Considered Tall Today? With the average Viking male being about 5'6”, this is slightly below today's average and even lower than the average for Scandinavian men today.
Vikings worked long hours, carrying, and using heavy equipment which contributed to the formation of muscles, even from an early age. Another reason for the significant strength of the Vikings was their diet. Vikings were mostly hunters, not gatherers, due to their cold, harsh environment.
The Vikings' anatomy was very similar to ours, except that the ancient Danes were 8-10 cm shorter, on average, than we are today. Louise Kæmpe Henriksen believes that Viking bodies were generally marked by the hard work they had to put in every day as peasants.
Experts say natural selection, combined with a good animal protein diet, makes these Nordic locals taller than their counterparts elsewhere in the world. The Norwegians, like some of the other tallest people in the world have some great genetic backgrounds. Average height of Norwegians: 5 feet 7.97 inches.
Average height of a Norwegian
In 2019, the average Norwegian was recorded as being 172.65cm tall, with the average Norwegian man standing at 179.74cm and the average Norwegian woman standing at 165.56cm. While this is taller than the average Brit or American in 2019, it's not unreasonably tall.
The physical build of the Vikings was much like our own. But we can assume that they must have been more muscular than we are today, because of the hard physical work that they did.
Diet and exercise, mostly. Vikings had a very meat heavy diet, which leads to muscle growth.
Norway — 172.65cm (5 feet 7.97 inches)
An average Norwegian is 172.65cm (5 feet 7.97 inches) tall. Norwegian men average out at 179.74cm (5 feet 10.76 inches) tall. The women measure out at 165.56cm (5 feet 5.18 inches) tall.
They were particularly nervous in the western sea lochs then known as the "Scottish fjords". The Vikings were also wary of the Gaels of Ireland and west Scotland and the inhabitants of the Hebrides.
So do Vikings still exist today? Yes and no. No, to the extent that there are no longer routine groups of people who set sail to explore, trade, pillage, and plunder. However, the people who did those things long ago have descendants today who live all over Scandinavia and Europe.
Latvian women are the tallest on the planet, with an average height of 170cm. * The top four tallest countries for men are the Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia and Latvia. The top four tallest countries for women are Latvia, the Netherlands, Estonia and the Czech Republic.
Remember the average life for a man in the Ancient Rome's times was about 40… Even the average height was shorter than today's Romans: around 5'5”!
Vikings were likely quite tall even by modern standards, with adult Norse males in Sweden, Norway, and England found to average around 176 cm (5 ft 9¼ in) in height, compared to 175.3 cm (5 ft 8⅞ in) in modern-day USA and England. The taller Vikings reached around 190 cm and the shorter around 170 cm.
In a paper published in Nature, the researchers show that northern Europeans seem to have a stronger genetic link to a particularly tall nomadic population from the Eurasian steppe who came to Europe around 4,500 years ago. Because of these genes, northern Europeans are still tall compared to others on the continent.
Scientists assume that a diet rich in milk and meat played a major role. The Dutch have become so much taller in such a short period that scientists chalk most of it up to their changing environment. As the Netherlands developed, it became one of the world's largest producers and consumers of cheese and milk.
There is evidence of Viking visits to Australia. They weren't Norsemen. We call them Explorers in English, not Vikings. Until the British arrived, none of them stayed long enough to establish a settlement, not even the Makassans.
The bras were often made of metal and until now scientists had thought they were used as collar-bone protection. But it is now clear these pads were worn much further down by female Vikings, according to the work in Birka, Sweden's oldest Viking centre.
Posted Sept. 22, 2020, 8:05 a.m. It turns out most Vikings weren't as fair-haired and blue-eyed as legend and pop culture have led people to believe. According to a new study on the DNA of over 400 Viking remains, most Vikings had dark hair and dark eyes.