The history of Normans

The Normans were the people of Normandy, the north-western province of France that came into existence at the beginning of the 10th century. They are the band of Vikings that laid the foundation for the duchy of Normandy.

It started in the year of 911, at the so-called treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte. At that time and place Charles the Simple, king of the Wests Franks evidently granted territory about the lower Seine and the city of Rouen to a band of Viking led by one Rollo.

The term ‘Viking’ is rarely used in medieval Europe, a word which evoked fear and distrust in the minds of Europeans.

Normans name derives from ‘north men’, which means ‘men who came from the north’, and etymology that was well understood by the Normans themselves.

Despite the hostility of their neighbors, the Normans assumed Frankish ways: they accepted the religion, the language and the women of the Franks.

From Normandy they set out later to conquer southern Italy and the greater part of Britain and some established themselves elsewhere in Europe.

In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Normans, as they came to be known in English, became a people renowned throughout their new Frankish homeland and indeed, in an area stretching from Ireland to the Holy Land. 

In the west, the Normans became the conquerors of England, after their successful invasion of 1066.

The Normans involvement in southern Italy began in 1013 at the shrine of St Michaels on Monte Gargano, when a Latin rebel against Byzantium authority in southern Italy, Meles, invited the Normans to serve him as mercenaries.

In the 1090s, Norman’s forces were instrumental participants in the First Crusade both in the journey to and capture of Jerusalem and in relations with the Byzantium emperor of the time, Alexius Commnenus.
The history of Normans

The Viking people

From the eight century to the eleventh, Scandinavians, mostly Danes and Norwegians, figure prominently in the historians of Western Europe as raiders, conquerors and colonists.

They came from what are now Denmark, Norway and Sweden nations that only took shape later during the medieval period. They are located in the northern European region known as Scandinavian which occupies two peninsulas and hundreds of islands.

Men and women from west Scandinavia emigrated to settle, not only in the parts of the British Isles that were then under Scandinavian control, but also in the Faeroes and Iceland, Atlantic islands that previously been uninhabited.

During that time, they were one of the most dynamic and feared peoples in Europe. They sailed from their own countries in search of new lands to conquer and to settle.

Their raids across Europe gave them a reputation as violent warriors.

The people these Scandinavians encountered gave them a variety of names. To the Anglo-Saxon; the Vikings were ‘pagans’, ‘Danes’ or ‘Northmen’. Frankish sources too refer to them as Northmen or Normans; while German chronicles describe them as Ashmen.

Spanish Muslim sources refer to them as al-Madjus; Slavic sources as Rus and Byzantine sources as Rhos.

In the ninth century it was only English who occasionally, called the invaders Vikings, a Scandinavian word that now has a wider meaning and is used to describe many aspects of Scandinavia society in what is commonly called the Age of the Vikings.

The fighting skill of the Vikings was legendary across Europe. During the Age of Vikings, the nations of Denmark, Norway and Sweden were molded out of small chieftains and principalities and became Christian realms.

Iceland, Greenland and a section of North America were colonized by Norsemen who also raid and settled in parts of the British Isles and northwestern mainland Europe. Viking traders and dynasts loomed large on Russian soil.

They arrived on the British coasts in 793 and looted the places they attacked and took the booty home. Eventually the raids turned into an invasion and in 865 a large Viking army swept through England.
The Viking people