The Normans and Their World

by Jack Lindsay

  The thwarted movement further suggests that a fairly high level of prosperity had been reached by the Norman peasants, whom we may take to be now a mixture of Norsemen and earlier stocks. One result of this whole development was to undermine systems of servile status. Soon the Normans were far more free from such systems than any other area in France.

  The next trouble came from the nobles, led by the turbulent William count of Hiesme, a son of Richard I. Raoul d’Ivri crushed the revolt, and hunted down and hanged the rebels. William was imprisoned but escaped by making love to his jailer’s daughter, who gave him a long rope; harried, he at last came on the duke hunting in the forest of Vernon, begged forgiveness, and was appointed count of Eu, with rights to hold his own courts.

  Richard married Judith, sister of the count of Rennes. That count was recognized as duke of Brittany, and he married Richard’s sister Hadwisa. Richard in his foreign policy carried on that of his father: good relations with Scandinavia and an alliance with Paris. But as usual troubles occurred. Flanders caused less anxiety; but there were threats from Chartres and Blois, and Anjou on the south, which was being built up by Black Fulk, needed more and more to be watched. Richard sent troops to help King Robert of France against the Burgundians in 1007; but tensions grew up between Normandy and France through Richard’s friendship with Count Odo of Champagne and Chartres, who married his sister Maud with a dowry of half the county of Dreux — disputed land between Normandy and Chartres. Then when Maud died childless in 1015 and Odo refused to return her dowry, Richard attacked and defeated him and his allies of Maine and Meulan. However, Odo recovered, and Richard asked for Norse help. William of Jumièges tells of King Olaf of Norway and King Lacman of Sweden arriving with fleets in the Seine, come from piratic raids on Brittany. (In fact there was no Lacman; William probably confused the term lagman, lawman. But Olaf did visit Normandy.)

  Saint Olaf’s Saga gives us a valuable glimpse of the way in which Norsemen kept up their piratic voyages down the Atlantic coast, treating the Norse settlements as friends or enemies according to the needs of the moment. Normandy however seems to have been recognized as the place for wintering in or for disposing of plunder. In 1013 ‘Olaf sailed southwards out to sea’ from England, ‘and had a battle at Ringsfjord and took a castle on a hill to which Vikings resorted, and burned the castle’, which Sigvat the Scald called ‘a robber-nest hung in the air’. Then Olaf went westwards to Grislopol and fought there with Vikings at Williamspol. (These places must have all been in Valland, the western coast of France between the Seine and the Garonne; the hill-castle may be Mont St Michel; and Williamsby refers to the seat of William V, duke of Aquitaine (990-1030), who is said to have fought Vikings on the shores of Poitou. The names show that the various Norse settlements once had their own Norse names, which were later lost; we see also that Snorre is using scaldic poems for his account.) Olaf felt little sense of community with settled Norsemen if they offered a good chance of loot. He next sailed west to Fetlafjord and then south to Seliopol, fighting at both places. He was now somewhere in south-west France or north Spain. He took a castle Gunvaldsburg, very large and old, and made prisoner Geirfinn, the earl there. After a conference with the men of the castle, he laid a scatt on town and earl, a ransom of 12,000 gold shillings, which was paid. ‘After that king Olaf steered with his fleet westward to Karlsa,’ perhaps the Guadalquivir. ‘He halted there and had a fight. And while he was lying in Karlsa river, waiting for a wind and meaning to sail up to Nörvasund,’ the Straits of Gibraltar, and then on to the Land of Jerusalem, he had a dream: ‘there came to him a great and important man, but of a terrible appearance, and spoke to him and told him to abandon his plan of going on to that land. “Go back to your odal, for you’ll be king over Norway for ever.”’ He interpreted this dream to mean that he’d be king over the country and his posterity after him, for a long time. After this apparition he turned about and came to Peitoland [Poitou]. Here he plundered and burned a merchant town Varrange, perhaps Guerande in south Brittany, north of the Loire mouth and not in Poitou; Snorre or the scalds may have confused the geography. The scald Ottar goes on, ‘Poitou he plunders, Tuskland he burns. He fights and wins each way he turns.’ Tuskland is the land of Tours on the Loire. Sigvat sings, ‘The Norseman’s king is up the Loire.’[94]

  Icelandic written history had begun with the account by Are Totgilsson (soon after 1120); Eirik Oddson (1150-60) worked on contemporary events, questioning men with firsthand knowledge. An abbot of Tingöre, Karl Jonson, wrote on Norwegian history in the late twelfth century, and others carried on the work with varying reliability. Snorre Sturlesson wrote his Sagas of the Kings in the first half of the thirteenth century. For our purposes the attitudes and ideas preserved in Norse tradition are what mainly matter. After the tale of Olaf’s voyages Snorre gives an account of the Norman dukes which ends:

  From Ganger Rolf are descended the Earls of Rouen, who have long reckoned themselves of kin to the chiefs in Norway and held them in such respect that they always were the greatest friends of the Northmen; and every Northman found a friendly country in Normandy, if he required it. To Normandy King Olaf came in autumn, and he stayed all winter in the river Seine in good peace and quiet.[95]

  An odd event that occurred during Olaf’s visit was his conversion to Christianity. Clearly the religious impulsion was minimal; he must have been deeply impressed by the way in which his fellow Norsemen had advanced in Normandy, and have identified this advance with the Christianized feudalism that he found as their political system. He was baptised by Robert, the worldly archbishop of Rouen, who was Richard’s brother. When he became king of Norway, he imposed Christianity with fire and sword and became the patron saint of the Scandinavian world. We see incidentally that men like Olaf had their scalds with them on their voyages; and such episodes as the sojourn of Olaf’s fleet must have done much to revive traditional elements of culture among the Normans.

  King Robert of France was sufficiently alarmed by events in Normandy to call a great council of his tenants-in-chief: a rare event in France with its unruly barons. Both Richard II and Odo appeared, and Robert settled their disputes. Chartres was to keep Dreux, Normandy was to keep Tillières, a strong fortress which Richard had built in Dreux. The last episode of the latter’s reign was a campaign in support of Reginald of Burgundy.

  *

  We may now turn to England and the effects there of Norse invasions. After Alfred the kings of Wessex had steadily extended their power until Edward the Confessor became king of all England. Thus the resistance of Wessex to the Danes had ended in a rough unification of England under Alfred’s line. Henceforth the old division into kingdoms gave way to one into large earldoms. Edward’s son Athelstane was soon acknowledged by the princes of Strathclyde and Wales, and by the last semi-independent chief, Ealdred of Bamborough in Northumbria. There were the inevitable disorders and resistances; but Athelstane by his victory at Brunanburh in 937 consolidated his position. The bards sang of him in the same tones as those used of Beowulf and Hrothgar:

  In this year King Athelstane, Lord of Warriors, Ring-giver of Men, with his brother the prince Edmund, won deathless glory with the edge of swords in warfare round Brunanburh. With their hammered blades, the Sons of Edward clove the shieldwall and hacked the linden bucklers as was instinctive in them, from their ancestry, to defend their land, their treasure, and their homes, in frequent battle against the enemy.

  Athelstane’s son Edmund reigned five years. He and his brother had to fight hard against Eric Bloodaxe of Norway who had re-established Norse rule at York. Eadred, the next king, was weak; but after a year the Mercians and Northumbrians elected his brother Eadgar in his place. When Eadred died in 959, Eadgar ruled the south as well as the north, and was left in peace till his death in 975. His son Edward was only thirteen at his succession, and a conflict of magnates broke out. Edward was murdered in 978 when he visited his stepmother Aethelfrith at Corfe. No protests were made by the church dignitaries
, who included Dunstan. Aethelfrith ruled in the name of her young son Aethelred II. The inadequately centralized kingdom had a strong tendency to break up into the main lay and ecclesiastical domains. Aethelred II Unraed failed to dominate the situation, and jeers at his incompetence even get into the Chronicle: ‘When the enemy is in the west, our troops are kept in the east, and when he is in the south, they go to the north.’

  William of Malmesbury mentions, without explanation, that Richard II of Normandy quarrelled with Aethelred in 991, apparently a bout the Norse raids, which had been resumed since 980 and had become serious by 988. Among the Norse leaders were Sweyn Forkbeard (son of Harald Bluetooth) and Olaf Tryggvasson. They were taking loot to Normandy, where they sold it in the markets. Pope John XV sent the Bishop of Trier to make peace between the rulers. But nine years later worse troubles broke out. Only William of Jumièges tells the story. He says that an English fleet attacked the Cotentin and landed an army, which Nigel de Coutances defeated. This year, the Chronicle states, the main Danish fleet had left England for Normandy; Aethelred took advantage of its absence to go north and ravage Cumberland. Possibly he left on guard over the south coast a Viking pirate, Palling, who was married to Sweyn’s sister. In 1001 Palling deserted and joined the Vikings; and the raid on the Cotentin may have been his work. In any event the English had reason enough to resent the way in which Normandy sheltered and abetted the Norsemen.

  In 1002 Aethelred’s wife died and he at once married Emma, sister of Richard II. Perhaps he hoped by the union to get better treatment from the Normans. Later, in 1017, Emma, an ambitious woman, married Cnut. She was thus linked with the English, Danish, and Norman ruling families, and through her the Normans gained a dynastic claim to England. Her son Edward could set out a descent from both Cerdic, the remote ancestor of the Wessex royal family, and Rollo-Rolf the founder of Normandy.

  Soon after his remarriage Aethelred ordered a massacre of all Danes in his realm. There was certainly killing on a large scale, and among the victims was Gunhild, Palling’s wife and sister of Sweyn. The latter arrived from Denmark in 1003, captured Exeter (part of Emma’s dowry), and then swept westwards, ravaging the land as he went. Emma fled to Normandy. But her brother had no wish to annoy Sweyn; he was growing ever more worried at the rise of Anjou. Emma went back to England. Perhaps about this time Sweyn made a treaty of perpetual alliance with Richard, under which the Danes were allowed to take English spoils to Norman ports, and sick or wounded Danes had the right of refuge there.

  Danish attacks on England were renewed in 1004 and 1006. In 1007 Aethelred bought Sweyn off with a large sum; he tried to levy ship-money and raise a fleet, making a vain appeal to Richard. For three years the struggle went on, with Sweyn winning. In 1013 Emma again fled to Normandy, taking her two young sons. Next year Aethelred joined her, via the Isle of Wight, and was welcomed by Richard. Sweyn, acknowledged King of England at Bath, had died suddenly in 1013, succeeded by his son Cnut. Aethelred returned to fight, and for a while, with his son Edmund Ironside, had some success; he died in 1016 and Edmund did not long survive him. Emma submitted to Cnut and married him, no doubt to Richard’s satisfaction.

  *

  As we have seen, we know little of the details of Norse settlement in Normandy, apart from the evidence for strong persistence of odal tenure and peasant independence and of pagan creeds, up till the early days of Richard II. We know relatively much more about the Danish settlements in England; and though the developments there were clearly very different from those in Normandy, they give us many pointers as to the way in which the Norse spirit and way of life asserted itself in colonizing groups in a strange land.

  In the Danelaw we find an element of individual initiative and self-assertion that seems to have been largely lost in the Anglo-Saxon regions. The village, not the manor, provided the main basis on which men got together and organized their economic activities. Manorial ties were loose and many people were free, or almost free, from the burdens and restrictions of dependent tenure. The ways of cultivating and holding the land were less rigid than in the areas of the open field system. There was less economic equality among the peasants; their holdings were less uniform, less symmetrically arranged. There were more smallholders, petty cottagers, and almost-landless men than elsewhere, though well-off peasants were not lacking.[96] We noted above how Rollo’s men were said to have insisted on their equal social status. Benedict of St More in his Chronicle of the Norman Dukes elaborates their reply: ‘Over us no prince or baron’s known. We’re all one of lordship alone. An equal and like life we share. Lord of himself is each man there; and each is faithful to the other.’[97] The men of the Danelaw, we feel, would have applauded these sentiments, despite their individual need to excel and make the most of things, despite their inability to make settled life a simple continuance of the rough brotherhood of the war expeditions.

  In England as in Normandy there were no mass invasions. The Danes were usually in a minority in the areas where they settled, basing their power on towns like York, Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby and Cambridge, and at times taking over the lordship of villages inhabited by Englishmen (much the same must have happened in Normandy). The Danelaw groups were mostly those who had come between 876 and 880, and in 896. However outnumbered by the English around them, they were dominant. At York they issued a coinage of their own, and, soon converted to Christianity, they set local craftsmen to carve stone crosses and gravestones in the styles they favoured. Norsemen cannot simply be identified with the sokemen of the Danelaw. Sokemen were few in Yorkshire, though making up half the population of Domesday Lincolnshire. If the latter group were all descendants of Danes, immigration must have been on a much larger scale than seems probable. So it has been suggested that the sokes of the Danelaw, as known in the eleventh century and later, were created by the government in an attempt to set up a system of jurisdiction and personal obligation to replace the traditional bonds broken by the invasion. That may well be partly correct. But though we cannot identify Danish settler and sokeman, the total effect of the new settlements, together with the shake-up that earlier systems in the area suffered, was to give certain new characteristics to the sokemen, to the Danish regions in general, affecting both Anglo-Saxons and newcomers. The names of some towns were changed. Streoneshalh became Whitby, Northworthing became Derby. Other places kept the old names, but graves or memorials attest the Danish presence.

  The Danes in some respects clung to their own terms and forms. We find the term wapentake for local units in the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, and in North and West Riding. It comes from Old Norse vapnatae: the flourish-of-arms at an assembly — a gesture made by free men. In the mid-tenth century it occurs in the Old English form waepentac, signifying an administrative unit with a court. An early law code of Aethelred, apparently laying down procedure for an area under Danish law, has a clause: ‘And a court shall be held in every wapentake and the twelve leading thegns along with the reeve shall go out and swear on the relics given into their hands that they will not accuse any innocent man or shield any guilty one.’[98] Not that there seems any essential difference between wapentake and hundred.

  The heart of the Norse area lay between the Welland and the Tees; but as far south as Peterborough Abbey, in a tenth century memorandum, the Norse term festermen is used for sureties to land transfers.[99] Many Norse turns of phrase and loan words, sometimes anglicized, appear in Aethelred’s code for the Five Boroughs; and there are Norse ideas, such as that a man of bad fame must buy land to get a standing in the court. This principle is applied to suspects arrested by the twelve chief thegns of a wapentake and to moneymakers believed to have struck bad coins.[100]

  In Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincolnshire, the Danelaw took in the three richest and most populous counties; and many Danish settlers there were active in bringing new land under cultivation, the flat lands along the Norfolk broads, the Lincolnshire marshes, the forest of north-west Nottinghamshire. New settle
ments of the tenth and eleventh centuries are marked by names with the element thorpe. The speed and ease of assimilation were increased by the fact that Danes could understand English speech, and Englishmen could understand Danish; but the Norsemen kept to their own tongue long enough for many of their words to pass over into English, some in local usage, others in general currency, e.g. toft, used throughout the medieval period for building site, messuage, curtilage. A typical estate in the Five Boroughs in 1066 was a lord’s house or manerium, with a home farm and unfree peasants, villani and bordarii living in the same village and doubtless helping in the cultivation of the lord’s land. But there were also the sochemanni, sokemen. Though paying homage to a lord and rendering such payments and services as followed from that act, these were their own masters. They had a recognized place in the courts of the wapentake and shire; they could give away, sell, or exchange their land or any part of it; they paid their taxes (danegeld or sheriff’s aid) directly to the royal officers or the sheriff, and were generally free from the villein’s duty of working two or more days a week on the lord’s land. (The Liber Niger of Peterborough, 1125, records twenty-nine sokemen at Scotter, Lincolnshire, owning a day’s work each week, two days throughout August.) Sokemen were thus mostly free from the compulsions of manorial discipline, though they may have been expected to lend a hand at seasons like haytime or harvest.[101]

  Thus at least some strong elements of the independent spirit of the sagas persisted in the Danelaw, preserved by individual ownership of land at peasant level. (We have noted that it is impossible to estimate just how much of this spirit was directly Danish, how much the result of Englishmen being relatively freed from lordships during the upheavals. No doubt both aspects were present and to some extent fused.) It is not by chance that our very word law comes from Old Norse, through O.E. lagu, the thing laid down. But we must not overstress the degree of freedom among peasants in the Danelaw; once the men were settled they could not but be subject to feudalizing pressures. Yet it would be equally wrong to underestimate the difference between the Danish areas and the old Anglo-Saxon ones. Thus, in England there are some ninety-five sites called Charlton (Carlton, Charleton, Chalton, Charlston, Chorlton), which represent places settled by groups of ceorls (Danish, karls). In the Charltons of the eastern shires we meet freemen (liberi homines) with a larger group of sokemen; on many estates the two classes coexist with the normal manorial population of villeins, cottagers and slaves, but generally they are set apart. The liberi homines are now not taken to be descended from the rank and file of the Danish armies that occupied East Anglia in the ninth century; but it is not easy to make out what distinguishes them from sokemen. Both groups were subject in some degree to signorial control, appearing in the lord’s court, making him payments in money or kind, and working perhaps one day in seven on the demesne. But however we analyse the situation, it seems likely that these Charltons resulted mainly from the shocks inflicted on the older social structure by the Danes. Especially where a lord held villages at a fair distance from his centre, many peasants could be expected to take advantage of the upheavals to free themselves, by payments or simply by assuming a higher status. The extent to which they could grow independent would vary with time, place, circumstances. If this interpretation is correct, the Danish irruptions and settlements started off something like the decay that appears in villeinage in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The process was not a simple one but it bore the seeds of a future society rather than an archaic return to tribal freedoms. We can understand why the Normans found the situation so hard to reduce to uniform terms and relations; we even find them calling villeins on their royal demesnes villein-sokemen.[102]