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From: Cai Bobbarækus Andersen - <>
Subject: Who were the Normans??
Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 09:37:56 +1000


Who were the Normans?

Quotes from from Encyclopædia Britannica ----

Cai



The Normans (from Nortmanni: "Northmen") were originally pagan barbarian pirates from Denmark, Norway, and Iceland who began to make destructive plundering raids on European coastal settlements in the 8th century. During the later 9th century their raids on the northern and western coastlands of France grew in scale and frequency, and the Vikings had secured a permanent foothold on Frankish soil in the valley of the lower Seine River by about 900. A Viking named Rollo, who had already won a reputation as a great leader of Viking raiders in Scotland and Ireland, soon emerged as the outstanding personality among the new settlers. In 911 the Frankish king Charles III the Simple made the Treaty of St. Clair-sur-Epte with Rollo, ceding him the land around the mouth of the Seine and what is now the city of Rouen. Within a generation the Vikings, or Normans, as they came to be known, had extended their rule westward to the districts of Lower Normandy. From then on until the mid-11t!
h century, the history of the Normans in Normandy was marked by a line of ruthless and forceful rulers calling themselves counts, or dukes, of Normandy and struggling to establish political hegemony over the indigenous Frankish population of the region.

Despite their eventual conversion to Christianity, their adoption of the French language, and their abandonment of sea-roving for Frankish cavalry warfare in the decades following their settlement in Normandy, the Normans retained many of the traits of their piratical Viking ancestors. They displayed an extreme restlessness and recklessness, a love of fighting accompanied by almost foolhardy courage, and a craftiness and cunning that went hand in hand with outrageous treachery. In their expansion into other parts of Europe, the Normans compiled a record of astonishingly daring exploits in which often a mere handful of men would vanquish an enemy many times as numerous. An unequaled capacity for rapid movement across land and sea, the use of brutal violence, a precocious sense of the use and value of money-all these traits characterized the Normans.


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At 6:59 PM +0000 5/7/06, Hugh Watkins wrote:
>No they weer of danish descent mostly
>

Not sure of that. William of Normandy's Scandinavian ancestors are
not know with certainty, but are likely Norwegian. He may descend
from Rognvaldr Eysteinsson Of Norway, Jarl of More.

Cheers,

Mike King
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