I.

Introduction

Normans, Viking invaders from Scandinavia who began to settle in Normandy in northern France before the middle of the 9th century AD. The Normans then went on to conquer England, southern Italy, and Sicily.

II.

Expansion into Normandy

Soon after AD 800 the Normans, also called Norsemen or Northmen, began a series of devastating raids on river towns in northern France, establishing themselves at the mouth of the Seine and other important rivers. In 911 the French king Charles III (called Charles the Simple) appeased the invaders by giving Danish Viking leader Rollo and his warriors the land around Rouen. The region was thereafter called Normandy, a French word meaning “territory of the Northmen.” The Normans adopted the French language and customs and the Christian religion, and they pledged to defend Normandy against other Viking raiders. Although nominally subject to the French king, the Normans remained semi-independent and retained their warlike proclivities.

III.

Conquest of England

In 1066, William II, the 6th duke of Normandy and a descendent of Rollo, led the Norman Conquest of England. The Normans defeated the English at the famous Battle of Hastings, and William became England’s first Norman king as William I, or William the Conqueror. His economic and administrative reforms enabled England to become a major power. Here, as elsewhere, the Normans demonstrated their powers of assimilation and adaptation. Anglo-Norman culture soon dominated the social structure, language, literature, and architecture of England. Later, the Anglo-Normans made conquests in Wales and Ireland, and many settled in the Lowlands of Scotland.

IV.

Normans in Italy and the Mediterranean

In the early 11th century, a band of Normans arrived in southern Italy as mercenary soldiers fighting against Muslim Arabs at Salerno. Others arrived and soon began to carve out territories, which they took forcibly from their former employers and neighbors. The most outstanding of the Norman adventurers were the sons of Duke Tancred of Hauteville, who in 1042 seized Apulia and divided it among themselves. In 1053 they defeated the army of Pope Leo IX, and the pope made peace by granting them their conquests at Apulia and Calabria to hold as fief for the Roman Catholic Church. By 1071 all southern Italy had fallen to the Normans under Duke Robert Guiscard, one of Tancred’s sons.

Robert’s brother, Roger I, undertook the conquest of Sicily from the Arabs. Messina in northeastern Sicily fell in 1061, but the island was not completely controlled by Normans until 30 years later. Roger II united Norman possessions in southern Italy and Sicily and in 1130 became the first king of Sicily. Over time, the Normans merged with the native populations and gradually disappeared as a separate culture.

The Normans were active in the Crusades, during which they helped form the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Latin Empire of Constantinople (see Byzantine Empire).