401. Norman Conquest: Secrets of the Bayeux Tapestry (Part 1)

Empire: World History

This episode explores the origins of the Normans, tracing their evolution from 9th-century Viking raiders into a distinct Frankish-Norse power that would eventually

Key takeaways

• Viking raids initially targeted monastic sites but quickly shifted to lucrative trading towns like Dorostat and Paris, exploiting Carolingian political fragmentation after Charlemagne's death.
• Carolingian rulers eventually adopted a 'poacher turned gamekeeper' strategy, granting Rollo land around Rouen in exchange for baptism and defensive loyalty, effectively plugging river routes with allied Norsemen.

Main topics

• Viking raiding strategies and Carolingian responses
• Rollo's settlement of Normandy and feudal integration

Notable quotes

"if you get waterways, you get Vikings. That's the best way of doing it."

Conclusion

The episode reframes the Norman Conquest not as an isolated event but as the culmination of centuries of

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) This episode is brought to you by our friend Plaud, the world's number one AI note-taker brand. Now, when it comes to research, we all have our own methods, sitting for hours in the archive, reading the secondary works, capturing every detail, grilling top scholars. But often we have to lose material in order to remain engaged when doing an interview. We've all been there, sitting there with our notes, missing half the vital bits of conversation, and that no longer needed. happen ever again, because now you just put Plaud on your collar and bingo, it records everything you say and transcribes it into sensible action points that you can refer to afterwards. I only picked up Plaud a few weeks ago and already it's changing the way that I work. With OnePress, the device transcribes those real conversations and turns them into clear actions. It also has a brilliant feature called Ask Plaud. which calls up details of hazy, long-gone conversations in seconds. Empire listeners can go to uk.plaud.ai forward slash empire. That's uk.plaud.ai forward slash empire and use the promo code empire to get 10 % off any Plaud device. Speaker 4 (1:27) Hello and welcome to Empire with me, William Drimple, and I'm afraid no Anita today because Anita's got another project. And so I am diving in on our new series alone. And our new series is around the Bayeux Tapestry, the exhibition of the year at the British Museum, which certainly my Instagram has been flooded with for the last two weeks. And I got to see the Bayeux Tapestry at a press briefing. And it is everything that it's cracked up to be. So you must go and see it. But what we decided to do on Empire was not to just dwell on the story in the tapestry. and the Norman conquest of Britain. But to open it up, as this is a global history podcast, to all the Norman conquests, which means telling the story after Hastings of the Norman conquest of South Italy and the extraordinary Norman kingdom of Sicily. And we're going to be getting the great Peter Frankopan on to tell us about that. And then beyond... to the Crusades and the Norman contribution to the Crusader States, which was the great principality of Antioch, a very, very long way from the Norman heartlands in France. But to open the series, we're going to go back in time before William the Conqueror. to the settlement of the Normans in Normandy and the whole story of how far the Normans were or were not the Vikings who landed in Normandy in the 9th and 10th centuries. Is the Norman conquest the last great Viking conquest of Britain? or had something completely different happened to the Normans in between them landing. And there is only one person we can go to on the Empire Pod when it comes to Normans and Vikings. And it is, of course, the great Eleanor Bannacombe. Eleanor, welcome back. Speaker 1 (3:13) Oh, thank you so much. It is so nice to be here. I should say for anyone who is watching this rather than listening, how should I put it? I am Speaker 4 (3:21) sort of... You're in a very colourful state today, Eleanor. Speaker 1 (3:25) Very cool. But I'm going to a Viking ship equinox boat burning down a butser farm tomorrow. And for the occasion, my hair is now, shall we say, high-loader pink and rather startling. It is very, Speaker 4 (3:38) very Viking indeed. And we should put in the show notes where you can get this Viking cut and these wonderful, very, what are they called? The runestone themed sort of. Highlights that you've got on now. Anyway, I would strongly advise to anyone that is listening to this on a podcast to just turn on YouTube and have a look at Eleanor's hair because it's going to be one of the most memorable things of the whole podcast. Speaker 1 (4:04) If Peter Frankopan doesn't have hair like this, I will be very disappointed. I'm having all your guests at Broke Pink. Speaker 4 (4:10) Eleanor, this is... Absolutely your territory. And you were on it with us recently talking about the Dane law and the Viking settlement of the north of England, which is such a fascinating thing, which left such an extraordinary mark on the landscapes. And what we want to explore today is how far Normandy was like that or not. How far is it different? And the impression one gets of the Bayeux Tapestry, which is in all our minds at the moment, is of these very specific mounted warriors in chain mail looking, frankly, very different from the Vikings. And if anyone's looking Viking, it's actually the English with their double-edged swords on the hilltop at the Battle of Hastings. So take us back now to 9th century France. Introduce us to... what happened after Charlemagne. I always remember that date from my history lessons of Charlemagne being made Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800 in Rome. Now that is already after the first Viking raids have attacked Lindisfarne. And so the whole creation of Charlemagne's empire is happening, even as the whole thing is beginning to crack around Anglo-Saxon and Pictish Britain. So tell us that story, Elena. Speaker 1 (5:21) Exactly that. I'm very grateful. to Charlemagne for being sort of crowned on that day in that year, it makes it a really easy date to remember. Speaker 4 (5:30) It does. Speaker 1 (5:31) And you're exactly right, because in the same way, if we're thinking of memorable dates, of course, the famous raid is Lindisfarne 793 off the northeast coast of England. And people, well, certainly sort of from a British and Irish perspective, that last decade of the 8th century is very memorable. But we have to think that's when it's also ramping up across the channel, you know, across the North Sea, because there's a difference. sort of political instability going on there. It's partly because of Charlemagne. So he's been muscling in on, well, you know, Saxon territory to start with, but as a result of what he's doing there, he ends up as the southern neighbour and a very powerful Christian southern neighbour to the Danes, you know, just sort of on that southern edge of Scandinavia. And that creates a huge amount of instability there. And so we start to get hints of sort of pirate-infested waters on the edges of Charlemagne's kingdom. We know that in 800, he tries to build a fleet to counteract them. This is sort of the era of a Dane, as it were. We don't know exactly what he would have called himself, but a king called Godfred who starts to appear in the Carolingian records. He's raiding the towns, particularly trading towns. He's striking at all these rich coastal targets. Speaker 4 (6:50) And this is the coast or up the rivers? Because I always remember this image of the Vikings burning down Notre Dame. Have I made that up? Is that from my distant- No, no, Speaker 1 (6:59) no, no. It's both. Basically, if you get waterways, you get Vikings. That's the best way of doing it. So you're definitely getting them around the coast. So, for example, we know that Godfred and his successors are sort of basically going in, taking- merchants from these international trading towns and sort of moving them into their own territory so they can cream off the profits from it. The Vikings steal... They steal merchants. I'm trying to remember which one it is off the top of my head that he does. But it's a Slavic one. He basically brings it over and he says, this is mine now, or at least according to the records. And I think there's some archaeological evidence to back that up. And meanwhile, exactly as you say, they're coming in via these waterways. Speaker 4 (7:43) Right up the Seine, right up the Loire. Speaker 1 (7:45) Exactly, exactly. There's the Frisian trading town of Dorostat and that gets hit very badly from around Charlemagne's death in 814 onwards. You start to see that being hit again and again and again. So initially it's not... quite so much. British Isles and Ireland, it's monastic settlements that they're hitting. Here, they seem to start with something different, which is the trading towns. But over time, by 837, Charlemagne's son, Louis the Pious, is having to build coastal defences for protection against them. So what you're seeing is basically when a polity is weak, Often that happens when one monarch dies, the next power struggle begins. That's when the Vikings start to take control. They're like, right, this is when we strike, this is when we go in. So yeah, they start to go down the waterways. We're talking the Elbe, the Seine, the Loire, and things start to get really nasty quite quickly. Do Speaker 4 (8:48) they do any better because the impression you get is that anglo-saxon is split up of course you've got northumbria mercia wessex that they're smaller kingdoms and in my head at least that you know that they're not as powerful as as the carolingians with an enormous europe you know kind of mini european community which is spreading right from france and germany and italy uh you know it's a big powerful polity do the holy roman emperors and charlemagne successors defeat the Vikings more effectively and fight them off more effectively. They also use bridges. Is that right? I have a memory of fortified bridges. Speaker 1 (9:26) Fortified bridges is a big thing. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we can talk about their various tactics. I used to, when I used to lecture on this to undergraduates, we used to have a... A board game. I made this board game where basically they would pretend to be the Vikings one side and the other side would be the Carolingians. Your Speaker 2 (9:42) history lessons Speaker 1 (9:42) sound Speaker 4 (9:43) so much more fun than mine. I was studying Ethelred the Unready and Agnes Saxon Charters and Simon Cain's not doing board games with Eleanor Barrowclough, sadly. Speaker 1 (9:53) But I mean, that's exactly what we were doing. We were looking at the different ways that the Carolingians, the Franks, try to counteract and what works and what doesn't. So it's exactly as you said, it's things like fortified bridges, it's paying them off, it's battling them, it's what's going to work. You mentioned about the strength, relatively speaking, to Anglo-Saxon England or those various kingdoms. And you're right, it's of a different magnitude. And so it's interesting to note, for example, what happens in... So Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son, dies and a civil war breaks out essentially between his three sons. Hang Speaker 4 (10:29) on, we can't go on without mentioning who this is about. This is Ragnar Hairybreeches, which is a very Eleanor Barraclough character. Oh yeah, Speaker 1 (10:36) love a good... Again, he probably had the bright pink highlighter hair. I mean, that we can probably say historically. Speaker 4 (10:41) I'm pretty Speaker 1 (10:41) sure he did. Right? Speaker 4 (10:43) Well, Speaker 1 (10:44) Ragnar Hairybreeches. Yeah, this is... So we've got to think about what's happening across... what was Charlemagne and then Louis the Pious' huge area. So it gets split up into three. We've got Charles the Bold, he gets West Francia, which is very roughly what France is. And then Lothar gets Middle Francia, which is the bit in the middle. And then Louis the German, as he gets called now, gets East Francia, which is rough. Germany, very roughly. But Speaker 4 (11:13) the middle is what sort of Belgium and Luxembourg and that kind of stuff. Yeah, Speaker 1 (11:16) exactly. And the problem is that all of these, as we've said, have these very lovely navigable deep rivers that go very, very far into their territories. And so, yeah, they're sailing, as we said, the Seine, the Elbe. And so we have Rouen, for example, which will... come back to later in our story, getting sacked in 841. Paris gets attacked repeatedly and exactly as you say, 845, there's a reference in the annals to a Viking leader called Reginherus, which might be the historical version of the figure that we come to know as Reginheri breeches. Do Speaker 4 (11:58) we know what his breeches were made of to bring this wonderful description? Speaker 1 (12:03) I'm trying to remember whether it's kind of their rough, you know, is it the material? The problem is that that comes from the sagas and the sagas about Ragnar Harry, which is more and more fantastical. Because Speaker 4 (12:17) he's the Speaker 1 (12:17) one that famously is said to have been killed in the pit of snakes. And he gives this amazing death speech. And I always think, well, he was there to write down this amazing death speech. The snakes in there sort of transcribing it, you know. It all gets a little bit funny. Speaker 4 (12:32) Secretarial snakes. Speaker 1 (12:33) Yes, secretarial snakes. Speaker 4 (12:36) Now, you mentioned, Eleanor, this whole business of paying them off. Now, as we know from Ethelred already, if you pay Dane Geld, it just brings them back again. And I think you said a very nice analogy of it being like leaving milk for a stray cat. Speaker 3 (12:52) Yes, Speaker 1 (12:52) exactly. Basically, if you're trying to get rid of a stray cat by leaving it milk, it's going to drink the milk, go away, say thank you very much, and then come back for more milk. And that's exactly what the Vikings do. So there's a great entry from the Annals of Saint-Bertin from 845. They say, it's a very hard winter. In March, 120 ships of the Northmen sailed up the centre of Paris. They laid waste to everything on either side. And meeting not the least bit of opposition, which is important. Basically, everyone's shocked. Speaker 4 (13:25) 120 ships is a big one. Speaker 1 (13:26) It is, if it's true. So people argue a lot about how many ships are involved because 120 is a nice round number. And the question is always who's counting the ships. I don't think it's impossible, but... people do. There is a very niche branch of academia, which is basically people get very exercised about how many ships. And not just when we're talking about Western Europe, but also, for example, in Byzantium on the Caspian Sea, how many ships actually are there. But This particular annul says he makes a deal with them. He hands over £7,000 of silver as a bribe. Basically, it says he persuaded them to go away. But what's interesting is what happens next, according to the annul. So Horik, king of the Northmen, sent 600 ships up the Elbe in Germany against Louis the German. So they're like, thanks very much for the money. Horik. Horik, yeah. Speaker