The Normans and Their World

by Jack Lindsay

  William of Malmesbury records the tale that the people of Chartres had implored the aid of the Virgin Mary and flew her shift on the ramparts as a banner — Charles had brought this with other relics from Byzantion. ‘At the sight the enemy burst out laughing and shot their arrows at it; but they didn’t do so with impunity. Soon their eyes were dimmed and they couldn’t advance or retreat.’ The towns-folk rushed out and ‘indulged in a plentiful slaughter of them, as far as fortune permitted’. Rollo, however, took Rouen soon afterwards. Charles, ‘consulting his nobility, resolved it was advisable to make a show of royal munificence when unable to repel injury. So he sent for Rollo in a friendly manner.’ But Rollo’s ‘inbred and untameable ferocity’ was such that when bystanders suggested he should kiss his benefactor’s foot, he disdained to kneel, grasped the foot and dragged it up to his mouth as he stood erect. Charles fell on his back, with the Normans laughing and the Franks indignant. Rollo passed off his rudeness by saying that he had acted according to the custom of his country. Then he returned to Rouen and died there. However Dudo, dean of St Quentin, in his Praise of the Early Normans (written a century after the event), stated that Rollo chose a follower to make the act of homage on his behalf, and it was this man who toppled the king over.

  It seems clear that many legends grew up about Rollo and Charles, and that we cannot trust any of the accounts, as they were concerned to give a formal and definite basis to the acceptance of the Viking settlement. Still, we may accept as fact that some sort of accord was worked out around 911. About thirty years earlier Alfred had had to make a treaty with the Danish invaders under Guthrum, accepting and seeking to stabilize the situation in East Anglia.

  The Northmen called Rouen Ruda or Rudaburg, so that the earls of Normandy were the Ruda-jarlar. There was as yet no idea of Normandy as a coherent district; the title was personal, not territorial in the feudal sense. Many of the Vikings led by Rollo into baptism are said to have been immersed ten or twelve times so as to get a good supply of the white garments given out for the rite. But for long any conversions were superficial. At Rollo’s funeral, we are told that gifts were made to monasteries and a large number of captives were sacrificed. How summary and brutal the conversions of Norsemen by their lords could be may be read in the Olaf sagas. Thus Olaf behaved in the Uplands:

  He inquired particularly how it stood with their Christianity, and, where improvement was needful, he taught them the right customs. If there were any who would not renounce heathen ways, he took the matter so zealously that he drove some out of the country, mutilated others of hands or feet, or gouged their eyes out; hanged up others, cut some down with the sword; but let none go unpunished who would not serve God. He went thus through the whole district, sparing neither great nor small.[32]

  Charles was not giving much away, as part of the granted land lay in Robert’s duchy or march of Neustria (from the Loire to beyond the Seine), and had anyway been overrun by the Normans; he probably meant to balance one vassal with another and use Rollo as a marcher-lord. Rollo’s area seems composed of the counties of Rouen, Lisieux, Evreux, in the lower Seine basin, with a wooded plateau to the northeast between the rivers Bresle and Epte and the sea. The heart of the area was Rouen, which controlled the route to Paris along the Seine and was already the seat of a bishopric. In the late fourth century it had been the capital of a new province of Roman Gaul; then Saxon and Frankish invaders mingled with the Gallo-Roman population of Celts and Belgae, but did not impose their language. Under the Frankish kings old ecclesiastical boundaries became administrative units; what was to become Normandy was the Second Lyonnaise, the church province of Rouen; the Carolingian province of Neustria. But so far the region had evolved no distinctive political life of its own, and it might well have seemed that before long the Vikings too would be absorbed. Indeed in one sense that did happen. Rollo’s followers adopted the French language and customs, but they stayed securely in control as a separate ruling class, unlike the Danish settlers in England who were being subjected to Alfred’s successors.[33]

  Dudo says that Charles, marrying Rollo to his daughter, granted ‘a defined tract of land, as an alod and in proprietorship, from the Epte to the sea, from which he could draw sustenance’. Flodoard, more plausibly, says that Rollo got certain maritime districts and the city of Rouen; not till 924 did the Normans gain the Bessin. Dudo, in accord with Norman pretensions of his time, was trying to make out that Charles had given Rollo feudal rights over Brittany. We cannot however interpret his term in alod to mean that there were no close feudal ties between Charles and Rollo. From Norman charters of the eleventh century we see that alodium was used to mean, not land free from seigneurial services, but land held by hereditary right. (This usage must not, however, be carried back to earlier days, when to hold in alod would certainly have meant the same as in the Scandinavian homeland.) Rollo’s status was certainly not precisely defined. Charles merely hoped to stop him being a nuisance and to use him to keep out further marauding Vikings.[34]

  He seems to have pushed west into the districts of Bayeux and Sées by 924, his son into those of Avranches and Coutances in the next nine years. Lower Normandy was thus added and the general shape of the duchy established: a fertile region of pastures, orchards, woodland, and low hills, with a long coast and a dampish climate, a sort of extended beach-head.[35] The Miracula Sancti Audoeni, written before 1092 by the monk Fulbert (with additions made before the end of the century), uttered a panegyric to the area: ‘We enjoy divine benefits: a temperate climate, fertile lands, gentle forests, an abundance of milk and cattle, an absolute peace, without fear of foreign incursions. And all this is given us by heaven, we proclaim, because of the merits of St Ouen of Rouen.’ Lacking clearly defined geographical frontiers, the region was in fact not easily defended and its lords needed to be vigilant and well organized if they were to survive. The uplands on the west moved on into Brittany, while on the east the lowlands drifted into Picardy. The Seine valley led on to the Ile de France. Such a situation was liable to cause continual trouble in a feudal world; but for this reason it was likely to develop either anarchic conditions or very strong rulers ready to take action against weakening neighbours.

  *

  We can now look in more detail at what we know of Rollo’s earlier career. His story, despite its confusions and uncertainties, illustrates well the hurlyburly of these years and the chance conglomeration of Vikings that led to the formation of the Norman state. He seems certainly to be Rolf the Ganger, son of Rögnvald, Earl of Möre, and of Hild, well-known in the saga world. He was called the Ganger because no horse would bear his weight and he had to go on foot; but Norwegian ponies were not very big so Rollo may not have been too huge. He seems to have ridden during his Frankish raids. Rögnvald was the man who cut Harald Fairhair’s tousled locks, so that the King was no longer called Lifa, Mophair. He played an important part in the unification of Norway, and his brother Sigurd was Earl of Orkney and Shetland. Another son of his, Hrollaug, according to the Orkneyinga Saga, was one of the pioneers in colonizing Iceland. Rolf took early to piracy and plundered in the Baltic, operating from an island somewhere north of the mouth of the Namsen. Returning (sometime after 864-5 if Snorre Sturlesson was right in his chronology) from an expedition that left him short of food, he landed in the bay where Oslo now stands, on the coast of the Vik, and raided cattle. The king was enraged, called a Thing, and had Rolf outlawed despite the pleas of Hild.

  Rolf sailed off to the Hebrides, ruled by Earl Ketil, and a daughter he begot there was later married to a Scottish chieftain. (Dudo makes Rollo come from Dacia where he and his brother quarrelled with the king. Rollo, exiled, went to Scanza, or Scania, then to England. Rolf did in fact go to Scania on a voyage of piracy and was banished by his king.) Snorre says that he now went to Valland (western France); Dudo says that he sailed up the Seine in 876, but the date seems too early. Dudo, wanting to enhance his reputation, makes him a leader in the many Viking campaigns; but no othe
r writer mentions him, though other leaders are named. He seems to have been a lesser chief. Dudo recounts how the Norsemen, asked who commanded them, replied that they were all equal and had no leader. Their reply was true; Viking fleets or bands were made up of contingents under leaders equal in rank, though for practical purposes someone of high prestige must have taken charge at crucial times.

  Dudo’s date perhaps should have been 886. He tells us that Rollo journeyed from the Hebrides to England where he was friendly with the Most Christian King Alstemus. The name is probably not a corruption of Alfred, but stands for Guthrum who was baptised as Athelstane. Dudo adds that Rollo went on to the land of the Walgri (Walcheren); and names the opponents of the Vikings as the count of Hainault and the duke of the Frisians, both historical characters. Annals mention many raids on Flanders, 881-4. Next Rollo went on to Rouen, where the Annals of St Vedast mention that Norsemen defeated a French force under the count of Maine. In 886-7 Norsemen attacked Paris and Dudo says that Rollo was their leader; but the accounts of the siege by Hincmar and Abbo (who was present in Paris) name the leader as Sigfrid and ignore Rollo. The siege was raised; but the Norsemen, though defeated at Montfaucon, took and burned Méaux. A second attack on Paris, like a third in 830, was beaten off.

  In 890 the Norsemen marched under Sigfrid into the Cotentin, and sacked and burned St. Lo. Dudo says that Rollo captured Bayeux. Popa, daughter of the city’s defender, Count Berengar de Senlis, was claimed by Rollo in the Norse polygamous fashion; and he begot by her a son William who became the second count of Normandy. (A strong tie continued between the Norman ruling family and the De Senlis; we may accept the story of Popa.) Dudo then says that Rollo besieged Evreux, which the Rouen Chronicle says was taken in 892. William of Jumièges states that Rollo was not at Evreux, but took part in another siege of Paris with elaborate siege apparatus: a story that seems quite without foundation. Alstemus in England sent for help and Rollo went to him. Guthrum Athelstane had died in 890; Rollo, however, may have made another visit to England, though the fighting at the time was inland, in Mercia. William says that on his return he sent his commanders all over central France, to the Seine and the Loire, to the Gironde and to Burgundy. Probably this account was intended to fill in a gap, when no record of his activities had come down. The failures at Paris seem to have led to a splitting up of the Viking bands. We know almost nothing of what they did from 900 to 911. The decade was one of confused violence, civil war, ravages by Hungarians, Slavs and Saracens; no doubt the Vikings played their part in the killing and looting, but some seem to have settled down. We may assume that in these years Rollo and his men were colonizing the Rouen area and consolidating their hold. Otherwise it is hard to understand why the Frankish king was ready to accord them some sort of status in 911.

  Rollo may have been killed at Eu in 925; he was clearly dead before the Breton wars of 933. Fresh bands of immigrants kept coming into Normandy. Rollo and his descendants did not act as mere marcher-lords barring out intruders; they welcomed reinforcements and extended their lordship over them, slowly welding a strong political structure. They were given, or assumed, the title of Count, which was gradually elevated into that of Duke. But the Franks for a long time looked on them as dubious outsiders. Till 1000 their region was the Land of the Northmen. A chronicler, recording Count Robert’s death, calls him the Duke of the Pirates. Five counts or dukes appeared in four generations after Rollo: William I the Longsword, Richard I the Fearless, Richard II the Good, Robert the Magnificent, then William II the Bastard, who conquered England. These counts did not easily win or hold supremacy; each succession was challenged.

  Rollo-Rolf was Norwegian; and the mixed band he led may well have included many Norwegians, from whom came his commanders or lords. In William’s confirmation of the laws of King Edward after the Conquest we read that the Norman nobility who had accompanied him to England claimed descent from Norwegian ancestors. But the later immigrants, while no doubt comprising Norwegians and Swedes, seem mainly to have been Danes. These latter would have made up the lesser free peasantry. Of eighty-two Scandinavian names known in pre-1066 Normandy, only two are purely Norwegian, while twenty-six are purely Danish; the others could be Norwegian or Danish. Place names suggest Danish colonization and cluster mostly around Rouen, the Pays de Caux, the Roumois, the north and northwest of the Pays d’Auge, or of the Cotentin. The personal names even suggest a movement of Danes from the English Danelaw to Normandy, especially to the Cotentin and the Pays d’Auge.[36] It has been argued that the place names show an essentially aristocratic settlement in contrast with the peasant settlement of the English. Danelaw. But the evidence has also been explained by the rapid disappearance of Scandinavian speech in Francia.[37]

  The merging of the two peoples in England was made easier by the fact that Danes and English could understand one another. In Normandy we do not meet any such widely-used placename endings as the Danish -by, though a few Scandinavian endings such as -tot, -boeuf, -fleur, are found. The common -bec is also probably northern. Hybrids in which a personal name has -ville added (rare in England) suggest a new lord putting his name in place of a Frankish predecessor.[38]

  We need not think of large hordes being involved in the raids, invasions, or settlements. We have noted the use of the term here in the Chronicle to express invading bands. It is usually translated as host or army; but the early seventh-century laws of Ine (preserved in a manuscript of Alfred’s time) declare: ‘We call up to seven men thieves; from 7 to 35 a band; above that it is a here.’ We meet there an early definition; but we have no reason to think that at any time here meant more than a group of fighters big enough to cause trouble. And quite small detachments of well armed and resolute men could bring about astonishing results in those years. When in 865 the Chronicle speaks of a micel here, it hardly means the Great Danish Army, as it is usually rendered; it means only a larger than usual body of desperadoes. The army called up by a Norman count was probably quite small; not more than a few hundred would compose its ranks. The chronicler Hincmar tells how in September 866 Normans and Bretons rode from the Loire to Le Mans and devastated it; on the way back they met Robert of Neustria, Rannulf of Poitou, and two counts of Maine: an imposing group of potentates. In the battle Robert was killed, Rannulf and another count were wounded, Rannulf mortally. The Franks were defeated. Hincmar, who is not likely to minimize the Norman strength, adds that it consisted of four hundred men. Yet this small body could take Le Mans and rout a force commanded by the leading nobles of western Francia.[39] When a large campaign was intended, men would be got in from the surrounding areas (Brittany, Flanders, Auvergne, Aquitaine); William II especially relied on Breton contingents. These mercenaries were hired for a term, probably forty days, at so much a day, and they expected a share in any plunder. They had to be watched or they fired a town so as to be able to loot it thoroughly in the confusion.

  The slight defences of the tenth century, which nevertheless baffled attackers, are exemplified by those of Senlis, which defeated Louis d’Outremer and Otto I in 946. The texts refer to a very strongly fortified site; but the walls were Roman ones, some six centuries old. Amiens too had its old Roman walls. In 950 Arnulf of Flanders fought Herbert of Vermandois; the latter seized a tower which the bishop had had built, and each of the belligerents was installed in a tower that served as a miniature fortress.[40] Even if the story of the Norsemen using great catapults against Paris is a later invention, certainly much ingenuity in attack had been developed over the years. Norse writings give us some lively glimpses of the Norsemen tackling London in the early eleventh century. Even though the sagas, written down, are imaginatively filled out, they come from a strongly maintained oral tradition and bring the scene to life. The Sagas of St Olaf tell how Olaf and his men joined Aethelred on his return from exile in Flanders in an attack on the Danes in London. Aethelred ‘sent an invitation to all the men who’d enter into his pay’: who would serve him as mercenaries.

  Then many
people flocked to him; and among others came king Olaf with a great troop of Northmen to his aid. They steered first to London and sailed into the Thames with their fleet; but the Danes had a castle inside. On the other bank of the river is a great trading-place, which is called Sudrviki [Southwark]. There the Danes had raised a great work, dug large ditches, and inside had built a bulwark of stone, timber, and turf, where they had stationed a strong army. King Aethelred ordered a great assault; but the Danes defended themselves bravely and king Aethelred could make nothing of it. Between the castle and Southwark was a bridge, so broad that two wagons could pass each other upon it. On the bridge were raised barricades, both towers and wooden parapets, in the direction of the river, which were nearly breast-high; and under the bridge were piles driven into the bottom of the river.

  Now when the attack was made, the troops stood on the bridge everywhere and defended themselves. King Aethelred was very anxious to get hold of the bridge, and he called together all the chiefs to consult how they should get the bridge broken down. Then said king Olaf he would attempt to lay his fleet alongside of it, if the other ships would do the same. It was then resolved in this council that they should lay their war-forces under the bridge; and each made himself ready with ships and men.

  King Olaf ordered great platforms of floating wood to be tied together with hazel bands, and for this he took down old houses. And with these, as a roof, he covered over his ships so widely that it reached over the ships’ sides. Under this screen he set pillars so high and stout that there was room for swinging their swords and as well the roofs were strong enough to withstand the stones cast down upon them. Now when the fleet and men were ready, they rowed up along the river. But when they came near the bridge, there were cast down upon them so many stones and missiles, such as arrows and spears, that neither helmet nor shield could hold out against it, and the ships themselves were so greatly damaged that many retreated out of it.