A Short History of the Normans

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE NORMANS

Charles Haskins

PERENNIAL PRESS

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Copyright © 2015 by Charles Haskins

Published by Perennial Press

Interior design by Pronoun

Distribution by Pronoun

ISBN: 9781518351518

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN

NORMANDY AND ENGLAND

THE NORMAN EMPIRE

NORMANDY AND FRANCE

NORMAN LIFE AND CULTURE

THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH

THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF SICILY

2015

THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN

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THE CENTRAL FACT OF NORMAN history and the starting-point for its study is the event so brilliantly commemorated by the millenary of 1911, the grant of Normandy to Rollo and his northern followers in the year 911. The history of Normandy, of course, began long before that year. The land was there, and likewise in large measure the people, that is to say, probably the greater part of the elements which went to make the population of the country at a later day; and the history of the region can be traced back several centuries. But after all, neither the Celtic civitates nor the Roman province of Lugdunensis Secunda nor the ecclesiastical province of Rouen which took its place nor the northwestern pagi of the Frankish empire were Normandy. They lacked the name — that is obvious; they lacked also individuality of character, which is more. They were a part, and not a distinctive part, of something else, whereas later Normandy was a separate entity with a life and a history of its own. And the dividing line must be drawn when the Northmen first established themselves permanently in the land and gave it a new name and a new history.

It must be said that the date 911, like most exact dates in history, is somewhat arbitrary. The Northmen first invaded Normandy in 841, and their inroads did not cease until about 966, so that the year 911 falls near the middle of a century and a quarter of invasion and settlement, and marks neither the beginning nor the end of an epoch. It is also true that this date, like many another which appears in heavy-faced type in our histories, is not known with entire certainty, for some historians have placed in 912 or even later the events commonly assigned to that year. On the whole, however, there is good reason for maintaining 911 — and a thousandth anniversary must have some definite date to commemorate!

For the actual occurrences of that year, we have only the account of a romancing historian of a hundred years later, reënforced here and there by the exceedingly scanty records of the time. The main fact is clear, namely that the Frankish king, Charles the Simple, granted Rollo as a fief a considerable part, the eastern part, of later Normandy. Apparently Rollo did homage for his fief in feudal fashion by placing his hands between the hands of the king, something, we are told, which neither his father, nor his grandfather, nor his great-grandfather before him had ever done for any man. Legend goes on to relate, however, that Rollo refused to kneel and kiss the king’s foot, crying out in his own speech, No, by God! and that the companion to whom he delegated the unwelcome obligation performed it so clumsily that he overturned the king, to the great merriment of the assembled Northmen. Rollo did not receive the whole of the later duchy, but only the region on either side of the Seine which came to be known as Upper Normandy, and it was not till 924 that the Northmen acquired also middle Normandy, or the Bessin, while the west, the Cotentin and the Avranchin, fell to them only in 933.

As to Rollo’s personality, we have only the evidence of later Norman historians of doubtful authority and the Norse saga of Harold Fairhair. If, as seems likely, their accounts relate to the same person, he was known in the north as Hrolf the Ganger, because he was so huge that no horse could carry him and he must needs gang afoot. A pirate at home, he was driven into exile by the anger of King Harold, whereupon he followed his trade in the Western Isles and in Gaul, and rose to be a great Jarl among his people. The saga makes him a Norwegian, but Danish scholars have sought to prove him a Dane, and more recently the cudgels have been taken up for his Swedish origin. To me the Norwegian theory seems on the whole the most probable, being based on a trustworthy saga and corroborated by other incidental evidence. Yet, however significant of Rollo’s importance it may be that three great countries should each claim him as its own, like the seven cities that strove for the honor of Homer’s birthplace, the question of his nationality is historically of subordinate interest, and at a time when national lines were not yet drawn, it is futile to fit the inadequate evidence into one or another theory. The important fact is that Norway, Denmark, and even more distant Sweden, all contributed to the colonists who settled in Normandy under Rollo and his successors, and the achievements of the Normans thus become the common heritage of the Scandinavian race.

The colonization of Normandy was, of course, only a small part of the work of this heroic age of Scandinavian expansion. The great emigration from the North in the ninth and tenth centuries has been explained in part by the growth of centralized government and the consequent departure of the independent, the turbulent, and the untamed for new fields of adventure; but its chief cause was doubtless that which lies back of colonizing movements in all ages, the growth of population and the need of more room. Five centuries earlier this land-hunger had pushed the Germanic tribes across the Rhine and Danube and produced the great wandering of the peoples which destroyed the Roman empire; and the Viking raids were simply a later aspect of this same Völkerwanderung, retarded by the outlying position of the Scandinavian lands and by the greater difficulty of migration by sea. For, unlike the Goths who swept across the map of Europe in vast curves of marching men, or the Franks who moved forward by slow stages of gradual settlement in their occupation of Roman Gaul, the Scandinavian invaders were men of the sea and migrated in ships. The deep fjords of Norway and the indented coast of the North Sea and the Baltic made them perforce sailors and fishermen and taught them the mastery of the wider ocean. In their dragon ships — shallow, clinker-built, half-decked craft, pointed at either end, low in the middle, where the gunwale was protected by a row of shields — they could cross the sea, explore creeks and inlets, and follow the course of rivers far above their mouth. The greater ships might reach the length of seventy-five feet and carry as many as one hundred and twenty men, but these were the largest, and even these offered but a slow means of migration. We must think of the whole movement at first as one of small and scattered bands, terrible more for their fierce, sudden, and skilful methods of attack, than for force of superior numbers or organization. The truth is that sea-power, whose strategic significance in modern warfare Admiral Mahan did so much to make us appreciate, was in the ninth and tenth centuries, so far as western Europe was concerned, a Scandinavian monopoly. Masters of the seas, the Northmen harried the coasts and river-valleys as they would, and there was none to drive them back.

Outside of the Baltic, where the Danes ravaged the southern coast and the Swedes moved eastward to lay the foundations of the Russian state and to penetrate as far as Constantinople, two main routes lay open to the masters of the northern seas. One led west to the Orkneys, the Shetlands, and the coast of Scotland, and then either south to the shores of Ireland, or further west to Iceland, Greenland, and America. The other led through the North Sea to England, the Low Countries, and the coast of Gaul. Both were used, and used freely, by the Vikings, and in both directions they accomplished enduring results: — Iceland and the kingdoms of the isles in the north, the beginnings of town life and commerce in Ireland, the Danelaw in England, and the duchy of Normandy.

When the great northern invasions began at the close of the eighth century, Charles the Great ruled all the Christian lands of the western Continent. By fire and sword he converted the heathen Saxons of the north to Christianity and civilization and advanced his frontier to the Danish border, so that the pious monk of St. Gall laments that he did not conquer the Danes also — be it that Divine Providence was not then on our side, or that our sins rose up against us. And this same gossiping chronicler — not the best of authorities it is true — has left us a striking picture of Charlemagne’s first experience with the Scandinavian invaders: —

Once Charles arrived by chance at a certain maritime town of Gallia Narbonensis. While he was sitting at dinner, and had not been recognized by the townspeople, some northern pirates came to carry on their depredations in that very port. When the ships were perceived some thought they were Jewish merchants, some that they were Africans, some Bretons. But the wise king, knowing from the shape and swiftness of the vessels what sort of crews they carried, said to those about him, These ships bear no merchandize, but cruel foes. At these words all the Franks rivalled each other in the speed with which they rushed to attack the boats. But it was useless. The Northmen hearing that there stood the man whom they were wont to call Charles the Hammer, were afraid lest all their fleet should be taken in the port, and should be broken in pieces; and their flight was so rapid, that they withdrew themselves not only from the swords, but even from the eyes of those who wished to catch them. The religious Charles, however, seized by a holy fear, rose from the table, and looked out of the window towards the East, remaining long in that position, his face bathed in tears. No one ventured to question him: but turning to his followers he said, Know ye why I weep? Truly I fear not that these will injure me. But I am deeply grieved that in my lifetime they should have been so near landing on these shores, and I am overwhelmed with sorrow as I look forward and see what evils they will bring upon my offspring and their people.

From the actuality of such an invasion the great Charles was spared, but in the British Isles it had already begun. In 787 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us there first came three ships of Northmen out of Haeretha-land [Denmark?], whereupon the reeve of the Dorset port rode down to the place and would have driven them to the king’s town, because he knew not who they were; and they there slew him. These were the first ships of Danishmen which sought the land of the English nation. Six years later they fell upon the holy isle of Lindisfarne, pillaged the church sacred with the memories of Northumbrian Christianity, and slew the monks or drove them into the sea. In 807 they first landed in Ireland, and after this there came great sea-cast floods of foreigners into Erin, so that there was not a point thereof without a fleet. Then came the turn of the Continent, first along the coast of Frisia and Flanders, and then in what is now France. In 841, when the grandsons of Charlemagne were quarrelling over the fragments of his empire at Fontenay, the first fleet of Northmen entered the Seine; in 843 when they were making their treaty of partition at Verdun, the Vikings entered Nantes on St. John’s Day and slew the bishop before the high altar as he intoned the Sursum corda of the mass. Within two years they sacked Hamburg and Paris. Wherever possible they established themselves at the mouths of the great rivers, often on an island like Walcheren, Noirmoutier, or the Ile de Rhé, whence the rivers opened the whole country to them — Elbe and Weser, Rhine and Meuse, Scheldt, Seine, Loire, and Garonne, even to the Guadalquivir, by which the Arabic chronicler tells us the dark red seabirds penetrated to Seville. One band more venturesome than the rest, entered the Mediterranean and reached Marseilles, whence under their leader Hastings they sacked the Italian town of Luna, apparently in the belief that it was Rome.

About the middle of the ninth century the number of the Norse pirates greatly increased and their ravages became more regular and constant, leading in many cases to permanent settlements. In 855 the Old English Chronicle tells us the heathen men, for the first time, remained over winter in Sheppey, at the mouth of the Thames, and thereafter, year by year, it recounts the deeds of the Viking band which wintered in England and is called simply here, the army. It is no longer a matter of summer raids but of unbroken occupation. In 878 during midwinter the army stole away to Chippenham and overran the land of the West-Saxons and sat down there; and many of the people they drove beyond sea, and of the remainder the greater part they subdued and forced to obey them except King Alfred, and he, with a small band, with difficulty retreated to the woods and to the fastnesses of the moors. The following year a similar band, now swollen into the great army made its appearance on the Continent and for fourteen years ravaged the territory between the Rhine and the Loire. Year after year the steel of the heathen glistened; in 886 they laid siege to Paris, which was relieved not by the king’s valor but by his offering them Burgundy to plunder instead. A century later the English began to buy them off with Danegeld. All men, laments a chronicler, give themselves to flight. No one cries out, Stand and fight for your country, your church, your countrymen. What they ought to defend with arms, they shamefully redeem by payments. There was nothing to do but add a new petition to the litany, From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us.

To the writers of the time, who could not see the permanent results of Viking settlement, the Northmen were barbarian pirates, without piety or pity, who wept neither for their sins nor for their dead, and their expeditions were mere wanton pillage and destruction. Moreover, these writers were regularly monks or priests, and it was the church that suffered most severely. A walled town or castle might often successfully resist, but the monasteries, protected from Christian freebooters by their sacred character, were simply so many opportunities for plunder to the heathen of the north. Sometimes the monks perished with their monastery, often they escaped only with their lives and a few precious title-deeds, to find on their return merely a heap of blackened ruins and a desolate countryside. Many religious establishments utterly disappeared in the course of the invasions. In Normandy scarcely a church survives anterior to the tenth century. As the monasteries were at this time the chief centres of learning and culture throughout