Numismatic and History Discussion Forums > History and Archeology
Norman history
LordBest:
The Normandy Normans were "Francophied", if you will, they adopted French language and some customs, but calling them French would be a really bad idea, back when they were around, they were sensitive on the subject. ;) Eventaully of course they became completely French, in they way they became completely English in England, given a couple of hundred years.
LordBest. 8)
slokind:
Try Shepherd's Historical Atlas (the earlier editions are sharper, and you don't need post-WWI!), or, for Sicily Westermann's Atlas zur Welt-Geschichte, Mittlealter, p. 63, for Sicily, where the green sea-route arrows, with dates on them, are Normans (though this atlas is better for HRE than anything else). I am sorry to say that the Shorter Times Historical Atlas is useless here. My copy of Shepherd is in my office...
Pat L.
N.B. Jochen's scan from the same map, below, is BETTER. Either he has a better edition (mine was ordered from Germany in the 1960s), or he made a more careful scan! Both are from same Atlas, same map. Pat
Jochen:
Here is p.63 from Westermann.
Best regards
Sorry, I haven't seen your map, because I was scanning! Looks similiar!
bruce61813:
If I remember my Scandanavian history courses, William the Conquers grandfather wasa Danish raider. the then King of France offerered to make him the Duke of the Normandy region, if he would protect the area from other raiders. The old man figured that was a better deal than sailing all over the place, so he stayed.
As for England, there were several very early kings of England, down the Ethelred that were partly from the "vikings" by ancestery. He was given a bum rap, as they say, as he and his army had just fought off some invaders to the north, marched 200 or so miles south to meet William, and fight again. It was probably only his death on the battlefield that allowed William to win.
Bruce
Robert_Brenchley:
That was Harold Godwinson, not Ethelred, who went down in history as 'the unready' because he didn't do so well against the Danes. Harold marched 200 miles from London to York in four days, collecting an army as he went, and destroyed an invading army under Harold Hardrada of Norway, then had to turn strainght round, march down to Kent, and fight again a week later. He lost partly due to ill-luck, and partly because the Normans had got themselves trapped, with their backs against the sea, and probably fought a lot harder than normal. If he'd won, it would have gone down in history as one of the greatest military feats in British history.
Northern England, the 'Danelaw', was conquered by the Danes in the 9th Century; the last Viking king of York was Erik Bloodaxe (947-948 and 952-954). Peace from Viking raids was eventually brought about by Knut (1016-1035); originally king of Denmark, he conquered England, later became king of Norway, and ruled, at least as a distant overlord, large areas elsewhere in northern Europe including much of Scotland and Ireland. His empire collapsed after his death, and Saxons ruled again in England (I'm not sure of the exact relationship to the Danish royal house) until 1066.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version