In 1066, English history was about to change forever as William the Conqueror and his fleet set off across the Channel from the coast of Normandy. The conquest would turn this duke into a king, but who were William and his band of rugged warriors?
In Meet the Normans, a new two-part series on History Hit, Dr Eleanor Janega sets out across Normandy to discover who the Normans really were. Here are just three things we learned from the series.
1. The Seine was essentially a Viking highway
Through the 8th century, the Vikings increasingly came into contact with northern Europeans through trading and raiding. Eventually, the rich lands, cities and rivers of northern France became a magnet for Vikings.
“The Vikings had already been raiding up and down the coast of the North Sea,” explains Eleanor. “But by 790 they set their sights on the Seine because this is an incredibly fertile and wealthy part of the world.
“From 790 the locals have to essentially put up with summer being the ‘Viking season’. Yes, you’ve got a great farm, but at any moment a band of warriors might come burn it down and enslave you.”
From longboats, with their distinctive shallow hulls and flexible, overlapped planks, Vikings laid waste to and sought treasures from monasteries such as Fontenelle Abbey. By the mid-9th century, Viking incursions had become a fact of life in the lower Seine valley. But the rewards of living in this region meant it was arguably worth putting up with this kind of terror.
2. Legend surrounds the origins of one of the most important Normans who ever lived
Weakened by internal divisions, the Carolingian rulers of northern France struggled to manage the Viking incursions. One Viking leader, Rollo, seized on this fragility, leading to an exceptional event in Rouen in 912 where he was baptised as a Christian alongside hundreds of his Viking retainers.
In a powerful demonstration of Rollo’s intention to establish himself and his family in the area, Franks and Vikings would have mixed in the medieval cathedral with pagan warriors queuing up to join the Christian community.
Not only did he embrace the Christian church and cultivate local nobility, Rollo adopted the name Robert. In doing so he became the first leader of Normandy. But his life prior to his violent arrival and later ascendance in Normandy is masked in mystery.
“Rollo is arguably one of the most important Normans to ever live,” says Eleanor, “but paradoxically we don’t actually know that much about him until he comes here to Normandy.”
In the 11th century, it was claimed he was a Danish nobleman whose brother had got in trouble with the king. A century later, Rollo was cast as a dignified nobleman with Norwegian ancestry. By the 13th century, the Icelandic saga writer Snorri Sturluson called him Rolf the Walker, a man so large that he couldn’t ride a horse.
“These are all light on actual facts, but what it shows us is that Rollo was an important enough person in the Middle Ages that if they didn’t have facts, they were willing to make them up.”
3. Tutoring the young William the Conqueror was incredibly dangerous
When the later Duke Robert of Normandy died on pilgrimage in the Holy Land around 1043, he left the duchy in a disastrous state with his seven-year-old heir, the future William the Conqueror, in grave danger from jealous rivals.
In this state of affairs being a tutor to the young duke was dangerous. Three of the duke’s tutors were killed while looking after him. Such was the peril that myths emerged portraying late-night escapes from castles, dressing up as a commoner and William waking to discover his tutor slain beside him.
“For a young child, seven [or] eight, to see that his own tutors had been killed before him would have traumatic effects on his psyche and it probably made him grow up much faster than he would have,” says historian Mathias Dilys, Educational Officer at Falaise castle.
“It sort of desensitised him, in a way. But he also had a keen sense of recapturing things that had been taken away from him, because he spent his childhood basically seeing other people taking things that belonged to him.”
William survived murder attempts and revolt, but they left scars on his personality. Before he mustered the strength to go overseas, he spent years hunting down rebels and securing his borders.
Both episodes of Meet the Normans are available to watch now on History Hit.
