Swedish Ice Balls

Sweden is known for three things and three things only: competitive bikini-ing, rolling up wads of disparate meats, and being the prototype for a post-Final Solution society. But the country may have a new claim to fame: home of mysterious ice balls. No, I'm not talking about those useless pebbles dangling between the legs of Swedish men. These are literally balls of ice that have been found washed upon the shores. Some are as big as footballs ("soccer balls" to Americans; "fag balls" to Alabamans), and as many as 200 have been seen crowded together at one time. Meteorologists hypothesize that snow may be blown into freezing waters that haven't iced over due to winds. As the snow is sloshed around beneath the waves, it accumulated a spherical layer of ice, eventually growing so big that it floats back to shore. This hypothesis seems to be corroborated by the fact that the ice balls contain cores of slushy snow inside crusts of harder ice. But we shouldn't discount the theory that these are just failed attacks on the Swedish Empire made by the famous ice pirates of the Arctic Sea and their ice cannon-laden ice frigates. They've been riding high on the hog ever since they successfully destroyed the Titanic. More details here.