The origins of the Duchy of Normandy

In 793 Viking longships landed on Holy Island off the coast of Northumbria and sacked the famous Lindisfarne monastery. 'May God preserve us from the fury of the Northmen,' intoned many a monkish prayer thereafter. By contrast, the monastery of Mont-St-Michel, also on an island, on the coast of lower Normandy, was too well-fortified to be successfully attacked.

Over the next century and more, the Vikings continued to assault Britain, and travelling up the Seine, Loire and Rhone, conduits for invaders and conquerors since Neolithic times, plagued Gaul almost beyond endurance. They first appeared among the Franks in the 840s, striking swiftly, brutally and successfully. The Vikings were a pagan culture in search of movable wealth, usually precious metals, which meant they preyed on churches and towns. Both were very vulnerable.

The Vikings' great advantage in Gaul was the political confusion of the ninth century when magnates, emperors and kings quarrelled constantly among themselves and could not mount any sustained, unified campaign against these northern marauders. Robert the Strong, for example, was killed in 866 fighting the Vikings but that was chance. He spent a great deal more time at war with Charles the Bald and Louis the Stammerer, his overlord and neighbour.

It was understandable, then, that Charles the Simple decided to deal with the Vikings by making them respectable. In 911 he bought off the Viking chief Rollo, known as the Ganger, by appointing him count of Rouen with a substantial grant of land to support the honour. Rollo then left Charles alone, although he and his followers, at least through the reign of Rollo's successor, William Longsword, continued to regard Brittany as fair game. Actually, attacks on Brittany were often retaliation for Breton attacks on Normandy and elsewhere, and therefore part of Rollo's obligation as a count. Meanwhile, the bishop of Coutances fled in panic from his Norman See, despite Rollo's promise in the agreement of St-Clair-sur-Epte not to raid the church. The bishop of Rouen remained in place to oversee the Christianizing of these pagans and apparently was not molested by them.

Rollo proved to be a competent administrator. So too were his successors, becoming over the next decades Christianized, pacified and, to some degree, Frankified. For himself, Rollo, who became Christian as part of the bargain, left nothing to chance and on his death bed ordered both benefactions to Christian churches and human sacrifices Ices, But his death signalled the passing of the 'old guard' so to speak, and his successors married Franks - for instance, Richard 1 married the daughter of Hugh the Great, thus becoming Hugh Capet's brother-in-law - and the Normans learned to speak the local dialect. Some of them in time entered monasteries or joined the clergy, and in due course became as French as anyone else in West Francia.

The duchy of Normandy, as it soon became, grew strong and rich, a duchy to be reckoned with. It was to contribute to the fragmentation of Gaul at the end of the tenth century as it became yet another powerful feudal territory quarrelling with its neighbours and maintaining a great degree of autonomy. The feudal relationship was complex enough, given the weakness of those who held the Ile de France. It was to be complicated a hundredfold when one of the great Norman dukes, Williaim II, bastard son of Duke Robert I, become king of England in 1066.

This article is based on material taken from A Traveller's History of France (© Robert Cole), published by The Windrush Press, and is by kind permission of its author Robert Cole.