Here’s the real mystery (UPDATED! mystery solved)

UPDATE — a reader writes:

My (Danish) father-in-law once told me this story:

For three hundred years, from 800 to 1100 A.D., the mighty Vikings of Scandinavia plied the seas, terrorizing the coastlines of Europe from the easternmost stretches of the Baltic to the Levantine littoral.  They plundered and pillaged with abandon and, as a matter of policy, threw all the women, from age 15 to 35, into their longships, and rowed back to Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

And on the way past England, they stopped and dropped off the funny-looking ones.

***

Why do half the women in England look like this:

Anne Massey:

Diedre Gail from Coronation Street:

WTF??