[MR] Viking Wet Nurses?

[Charlotte Johnson]

>
> >David Chessler <chessler at usa.net> wrote:
>
> >*Surely they used wet nurses.*
>
> ...
> They were a slave-holding society. All the primary documentation,
> their own and descriptions of them by others, mention that. The
> descriptions also say that they treated the slaves well, but that's
> perhaps a related issue.




> That is true, since the major means of spacing children would have
> been nursing. (There were means of positive contraception attested
> even at earlier dates, but not necessarily for vikings.) However, see
> my other message about the role of infection in limiting fertility.
>


Uh, I've completely lost the point of the original argument (please don't
try to illuminate me, I can read it if I want), but you can't really make
both statements to support the same point. If somebody was using a wet
nurse, then they weren't using nursing to space children at around three
years.

-Mathilde