I believe it was actually I who pointed out the bones hardening from being subjected to repeated-but-not-severely-damaging impacts and strain over time (in relation to controlled combat and the cost-benefit relations of some actions - and yes, it was one of our more recent PM-conversations). (Why do I use the expression "I believe when I recall quite accurately where and what I wrote?)
	I had also heard the bit about Vikings before... And quite a lot of it actually applied to my own culture, too (which isn't perhaps all that surprising given the relative regional placement of our countries ... our west-islanders were Vikings, too, after all ... or at least something close enough for other foreigners to not always clearly distinguish the two in their writings). Including the bit about women - such as for until Christians invaded and even slightly past that, there have been women found buried with battleaxes almost as frequently as men, and the jewelry buried with them is typically the exact same for both sexes. Same, women were often cited (though this in much later times, for obvious reasons) to be in charge of the house and finances whereas men were tasked with everything else. Both men and women also used to have long hair, and a person's hair was only cut short to mark them as slave (though some regions also did it for newly-married women ... not sure whether this was pre- or post-Crusade thing, however, not off the top of my head at this moment). 
	Storytelling was almost exclusively women's thing to do... I wonder whether it has anything to do with the disproportionately large amount of rather violent tales of manslaying women we seem to have, even preserved to this day. And other, more weirder stuff. (Meanwhile, we regrettably do not have actual epics of any kind, just tales and myths... The piece of fiction sometimes toted as such was written fairly recently by two random guys who were convinced Russia will very soon eat our culture for good, and contains next to nothing of the actual Estonian folklore. It's basically just one name, some technical elements and limited symbolics they took (and the one name, in actual folklore, belonged pretty much to the irredeemable enemy-and-destroyer-of-all-land archetype-villain), while lending influences from Finnish and Christian themes instead.)
	Hrn, yeah, a whole lot of random, perhaps, but sometimes random things are interesting, and why not. (Aside of the fact that I'm tired and three fourths of what I'm typing might be fairly incoherent.)

	(I wonder how much Jaelnec wondering whether bowing is acceptable was by coincidence, and how much from - OoC - remembering that Sekalyns do not bow? (And Aemoten earlier mulling over still associating it with decapitations rather than anything else.))