Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Huh. I can’t believe we haven’t seen this on ESPN or in the Olympics as a team sport.

I know beer’s important, but to do that just so your husband can win your weight in it. Now if it was your weight in Tequila, well that’s different.

the prize certainly is worth all that trouble - including flying across the world, training, etc. Beer. Of COURSE it would be beer.

I especially liked the prize, lol!

Reminds me of the traditional Scottish manner of all female heroines when competing for the right to win their man ...fighting in the old Highland way - bare breasted and each carrying an eight pound baby*

— Bonz

*Gratuitous Black Adder Quote, from “Duel & Duality”

Wife Carrying has been around so long as a national sport in Finland. I had no idea it had taken off as an international sport.  I remember a scandal with a winning Wife Carrier some years ago. (Why do I remember this?!) There was some concern this wife didn’t really meet the minimum weight requirement and I remember a long discussion in the article about the minimum weight, the tradition and history of wife carrying as a sport, etc.

I think they should ALL be disqualified!  Where are the long flowing tresses, where are the voluminous petticoats.  And, none of them are beating him on the back with their little fists.  Protective helmets indeed.  Why all the tradition has gone out of the sport. ;-)

I’m just flat-out bemused—sitting here with one corner of my mouth quirked up and shaking my head…

Wife carrying?  Surely the name ought to be “mate lifting,” then they could go all PC and have wives carrying husbands, too.

This would be such a saucey situation if a man had thrown thier wife over their should and started running from a wild bear or a pack of wolves but these guys dont want to protect their best assets. They want to get blazing drunk on the amount of pounds they dragged through freezing cold water. I give these crazies two thumbs down for crazy and two thumbs up for making me cackle and snort.

I know last year’s winner was from my people—the Estonians—so not sure what this says about us. Estos like to be the best…but at everything?

LOL that’s hysterical. :) I’d like my wife’s weight in Rumpleminze, if that’s okay. She doesn’t weigh enough in beer to get my drunk!

:)

No, it is in no way a national sport in Finland. (Speaking as an authentic and mildly annoyed Finnish person here). The idea has been around in a vague “silly games that people used to play hundreds of years ago” way in the popular culture, but the competition shown in the clip was started about 10 years ago as a publicity stunt. Some local entrepreneurs wanted to attract tourists to a village party.

The competition became more widely known in Finland mainly because the summer is a slow time for news, so the “yellow press” fill their pages by writing about stuff like this. And internet spreads this kind of silly stories worldwide.