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The Normans were the violent parvenu opportunists of their day: Vikings who settled in Normandy and became French before conquering England and becoming English.<\/p>\n
From obscure Scandinavian origins, the Normans relied on their military proficiency \u2013 and ruthlessness \u2013 to dominate the institutions and elites of Europe, and assimilated cultures, ideas and whole political systems in their pursuit of glory. Norman knights and generals occupied areas from the lowlands of Scotland to the deserts of the near east, thrusting themselves into the midst of conflicts and seizing chances whenever they appeared. They also left behind some of the most remarkable ecclesiastical and military architecture of the period, which speaks volumes about both their self-importance and their piety.<\/p>\n
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The people who became Normans burst on to the historical scene in the violent and tempestuous late ninth century. At that time northern Europe was beset by a \u2018Great Army<\/a>\u2019 of Danes whose various divisions came close to conquering all of England, and who wreaked havoc in northern France.<\/p>\n At about the same time a group of \u2018Northmen\u2019 started to settle around the mouth of the river Seine. Quite where they came from is unclear. The sources for the period are poor, and later medieval historians had different views \u2013 some thought that Rollo (also known as Hr\u00f3lf), their leader, had been Danish, others that he had been Norwegian. He is surrounded by various legends, including the spectacular statement found in later Icelandic sagas that he was known as \u2018Hr\u00f3lf the Walker\u2019 (Ganger-Hr\u00f3lf) because he was so large that no horse could carry him.<\/p>\n At around 911, King Charles III (\u2018the Simple\u2019) of West Francia (an early forerunner of France) signed a treaty with Rollo: Charles recognised the Northmen\u2019s right to stay in his kingdom, and they recognised his right to be king. It is likely that Charles did not have much choice, and that disturbances elsewhere in his kingdom meant he needed to buy himself a little peace. Yet what Charles managed to extract from the situation was the Normans\u2019 acceptance that \u2013 however nominally \u2013 this was his turf, and that, if they wanted to live in peace, they would have to become Christians.<\/p>\n A century later, the Norman historian Dudo of Saint-Quentin wrote that when Rollo was asked to kiss King Charles\u2019s foot in subjection, he had refused and instead told one of his men that they should do it for him. \u201cThe man immediately grasped the king\u2019s foot and raised it to his mouth and planted a kiss on it while he remained standing, and laid the king flat on his back,\u201d reported Dudo. This may well be an apocryphal tale \u2013 but, even if it is, it tells us something of how the Normans saw the treaty and their place within the French king\u2019s realm. They were vassals only in name.<\/p>\n Yet in accepting the king\u2019s terms and staying in France, the Normans allowed themselves to change. As the historian Simon Coupland has put it: \u201cThe Vikings became Normans, the pagans became Christians, and thereby, in the eyes of their contemporaries, the barbarians joined civilisation.\u201d The Normans had arrived.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It is unlikely that Charles the Simple foresaw that the Normans would still be knocking around his kingdom\u2019s northern reaches 150 years after he had bought them off.<\/p>\n He almost certainly saw his treaty as a chance to buy time while he put out fires elsewhere. How wrong he was. In 1066 Rollo\u2019s great-great-great-grandson, Duke William (\u2018the Bastard\u2019), would become one of the most famous men of medieval times \u2013 indeed, one of the most famous men in all history \u2013 when he launched a successful invasion of England.<\/p>\n The causes of the Norman conquest<\/a> are not completely easy to unpick. William was related to King Edward the Confessor (whose death precipitated the invasion), though not in the most direct way. Edward\u2019s mother, Emma, was the daughter of Duke Richard of Normandy (\u2018the Fearless\u2019), who was William\u2019s great-grandfather. King \u00c6thelred the Unready of England had married Emma in an attempt to prevent Normandy being used as a base for Viking armies attacking England \u2013 but although their son, Edward, had Norman blood in his veins, no English blood could be said to course through William\u2019s.<\/p>\n William would argue that Edward the Confessor<\/a> had promised him the throne, and that Harold Godwinson<\/a> (the English contender) had done likewise while in Normandy in 1064; indeed, a famous scene in the Bayeux Tapestry shows Harold swearing on holy relics that he will uphold William\u2019s claim. Conversely, Harold would say that Edward, on his deathbed, had given his kingdom to the Englishman.<\/p>\n The problem with these stories is that the English crown was not something that the incumbent could simply bestow upon his favourite. The rights to England had, since the emergence of the united kingdom in the tenth century, passed to the immediate relatives of the deceased king \u2013 excepting only when it had been conquered by Danes. Edward may have been childless, but there was a legitimate heir: Edgar the \u00c6theling, grandson of King Edmund II, to whom the crown should have passed. However, Edgar\u2019s youth \u2013 he was probably about 15 \u2013 is likely to have encouraged ambitious nobles to prowl.<\/p>\n Regardless of what promises had been made, William saw his opportunity to progress from being duke of a mere promontory in northern France to king of one of the wealthiest realms in northern Europe. Inspired, no doubt, by the success of King Cnut<\/a> only 50 years before, he gathered a great army of nobles and mercenaries, and mounted an invasion that would ultimately have huge ramifications for world history.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The battle of Hastings<\/a> is one of the most dramatic historical watersheds. The Anglo-Saxon<\/a> regime was thoroughly defeated, a great number of its nobility killed, and its survivors displaced by the Conqueror\u2019s machinations. Over the next century and more, the aftershocks of their victory spread far beyond England into Scotland, Wales and Ireland.<\/p>\n Scotland was never conquered, but Norman influence was felt in profound ways. The younger sons of Anglo-Norman families found Scotland a place where their skills were appreciated. David I of Scotland (1124\u201353), who had spent his youth in England and had the title Earl of Huntingdon through marriage, took English experiences north with him when he became king. He created new lordships owing feudal services out of the royal demesne, which he then gave to Anglo-Normans keen to do his bidding. Their influence effected deep changes in the nature and character of Scottish politics and of government.<\/p>\n The Welsh and the English had endured a fractious relationship for over 600 years before the Conquest; though Wales retained its own princes and kings, they had often accepted the overlordship of English kings. In the fraught years that followed Hastings, William needed to secure his western flank and prevent the sort of incursions for which the Welsh were famous.<\/p>\n To do this, he established marcher lords in Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford who acted almost as petty kings, with their own courts and chanceries, and their own license to make war on the Welsh. By degrees, Norman kings and their subordinates subdued Wales, building castles, allowing their own people to settle the southern lowlands, and bringing it under the rule of the kings of England. Yet the fact that this conquest took 200 years is testament to the resistance they faced.<\/p>\n Norman involvement in Ireland began with these same free-agent warmakers. In 1166 Dermot MacMurrough, king of Leinster, was deprived of his throne and sought the help of the Anglo-Norman King Henry II<\/a>. Henry was too busy to lend a hand, but Dermot eventually found support from the Earl of Pembroke, known as \u2018Strongbow\u2019. Strongbow captured Wexford, Waterford and Dublin; when Dermot died in 1171, Strongbow tried to claim the kingship for himself. Henry II, concerned by the growth of Strongbow\u2019s power, took a huge force to Ireland, obliging the Norman warlords to hand him their conquered territories. In doing so he became the first king of England to set foot on Irish soil, and so began the English kingdom\u2019s claims to lands and lordship in Ireland.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Scandinavians of the early Middle Ages were nothing if not adventurous. Their seagoing ways took them to Iceland, Greenland and North America, and their quest for gold and excitement sent them down the great rivers of western Russia to the Black Sea and Constantinople. Even after becoming Frenchified, the Normans retained something of this spirit.<\/p>\nWhy did the Normans invade England?<\/h2>\n
What impact did the Normans have on the other parts of the British Isles?<\/h2>\n
How did the Normans come to be involved in the Mediterranean?<\/h2>\n