Speaking of trolls.... where the hell have ya been Chaffy?

Maybe because it was originally written that way?

It comes from handwriting/cursive; in handwritten english the lower case w looks very much like a letter u with a double trough (as opposed to literally 2 u's, which would look significantly difficult. Difficult to explain this way, some handy images would be very helpful).

Right now, handwriting/cursive is a rarity, with print being the standard. This was not always the case; for most of the history of the english language, handwriting/cursive was the standard, with print relegated to tasks that demanded simplicity in execution, eg. engraving. I expect it'd be a bitch to engrave stone in cursive...