I heard this somewhere, long ago, that hundreds of years ago, Norwegian (?) families would toss out their kids into the ocean from the shore and only the children that had strong wills to survive were collected by the parents and allowed to live. This resulted in the stereotypical tall and muscular 'Viking' population.
I've got two problems with this statement:
Toddlers can't swim in any way nor stay afloat. They would drown, their "wills" wouldn't matter much. The only thing standing between them and death is how fast they would be returned to shore, how fast they would be warmed up and the temperature of the sea (which isn't very high in Norway). This sounds very unrealistic and is most likely a myth.
How does this make them tall? Or muscular? Northern European (estimates, of course) were on average as tall as most Americans now, with a prolonged decline from the 12th century to the 18th. If they were especially tall, it would probably be because of their diet and a very long process of evolution that would have began before any such thing as the vikings even existed.
Throwing babies into the sea wouldn't help much. Throwing unwanted babies into the sea could have been a method of "covering up" affairs or other things of that sort, but that's just speculation.
so can we figure out where this comes from (i take it op doesn't remember)? It seems somewhat similar to what George Martin does with the "baptisms" of the ironborn (asoiaf/game of thrones vikings) or rather the baptisms/drownings in days or yore. I would love to see if there was a connection here.