The Real Rollo & the Foundation of Normandy // Vikings Documentary

in early medieval France the age of the Vikings began slightly later than in Britain with the first recorded pirates arriving off the coast of Aquitaine in $7.99 it also ended earlier than in Britain with most invaders being driven off by the 940s this is by no means to say that the French got off lightly however it was on French soil during that brutal 150 year period encapsulating the entire ninth century that some of the largest and most intense of all Viking incursions took place including at least three large-scale sieges of Paris and attacks on nearly every other major population center and trading community in west Frankia the Viking Age burned brightly in what is now France and though it is usually said to have ended by the 1940s peace was only achieved by a French King giving away a large chunk of land to a group of particularly dangerous invaders though ridiculed at the time this decision ultimately proved to be the most effective strategy of all in combating the Norseman in just a few decades the Franco Scandinavian descendants of those invaders of the early 10th century would adopt Christianity within two generations they were speaking French and perhaps most ominously for their future opponents from northern Britain to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean they adopted Frankish customs in particular heavy cavalry and castle building [Music] it was within this precariously placed frontier society consisting at first of little more than a few determined invaders ruling with an iron fist over a subject population that the next and even more brutal phase of Northern European Warriors would eventually be forged these Warriors were destined to become the most effective fighting force in all of your the masters of lands from Italy to Palestine and the conquerors of England the age of the Normans was about to begin [Music] this is as much the story of those descendants of Norseman as it is of their founding father a larger-than-life character and one of the most successful Vikings in history the warlord from an obscure background became ancestor to every monarch in Europe Rollo the Walker in the year 799 just as the first of many long ships began to sail down from the north to lay waste to the shores of Western Frankia the veteran Frankish king Charles the great better known as Charlemagne already nearing his 60s and the most powerful European monarch since the fall of the Western Roman Empire was preparing for the most important moment of his reign in the year 800 he was symbolically crowned in Rome as the first Holy Roman Emperor a new title seen by many as being the successor to Rome's Imperial legacy though in reality the eastern Byzantine half of the Roman Empire still existed to the east of modern-day Istanbul as it had for some five hundred years and would continue to do so for much longer almost as soon as Charlemagne died in 814 the cracks in his outwardly unassailable realm began to show themselves before long the Carolingian Empire founded by his ancestors that he had helped to reach its absolute maximum territorial extents stretching far into Eastern Europe and deep into the Pyrenees began to fall apart in the wake of the Emperor's death from the Atlantic to the Adriatic regional strongmen increasingly sought to re-establish or Forge renew their own authority this coupled with a fairly ineffectual successor in the form of Charles's son Louie the pious who struggled to hold on to the Empire against rebellions from within his own family laid the groundwork for the catastrophic era [Music] perhaps not immediately but certainly in the long run the group that most profited from Charlemagne's death were the Scandinavian newcomers from the north for a couple of decades after 814 frankly as regional defenses held out for the most part with only occasional Viking forays making it past the fortified river defenses and well-drilled coast guards that had long patrolled the entrances to the Frankish river systems by 834 however Charlemagne's once mighty Imperial Army the bane of rulers from the Baltic to the Carpathians had become a shadow of its former self when the levees finally broke and the piratical Raiders came flooding in they wouldn't be closed off again for more than hundred years in 834 powerful fleet of Scandinavians possibly led by the semi-legendary Sea King Ragnar lothbrok swept aside the Frankish border guards who defended the rivers of the Northwest and headed deep inland along the Rhine to attack the trade in hope of dorestad an integral Emporium of goods from the Baltic to Italy and possibly the largest town in northern Europe at the time when those early Viking raiders left dorestad that autumn they were not only laden up with countless amounts of slaves riches and plunder but they also brought back to Scandinavia with them stories of yet more riches just waiting to be taken the next year yet another fleet returns to Dora started more came back the next year and the one after that the armies of the Carolingian monarchs were nowhere to be seen meanwhile in the rest of Frankia similar groups of pirates began to descend into the river systems like a great swarm of locusts they were bouts of resistance but by and large the attackers were simply too numerous and too spread out to be fought off effectively by the time the Carolingian Empire fully began to break apart in the eight 40s Frankie as Viking Age ad well and truly begun it's important to note that not all Scandinavians were pirates quite paradoxically dorestad initially at least continued to prosper and grow in size for a time perhaps profiting from other Viking raids taking place elsewhere in the Scandinavian world which brought with them increased amounts of wealth that could then be spent in the market towns of northern Europe despite the increased commercial activity which came as a byproduct of the new links with Scandinavia in 840 outright civil war broke out between Louis three sons by 843 the once-mighty realm of Charlemagne was officially divided into three separate realms most notably West Frankia the precursor to modern-day France and East Frankia the precursor to Germany fighting between the newly established realms didn't fully come to a close until the 80s it was amidst this brutal and chaotic landscape the breaker of the largest Western European state since the fall of Rome that increasingly large bands of Vikings continued to launch ever more ambitious attacks on all sides of the fragmenting state at first they over wintered in the river systems of the New Kingdom of West Frankia but before long they were there to stay setting up pirate basis that in some cases wouldn't be fully dislodged until the mid 10th century by the eighth 40s Scandinavians were active on every Frankish coastline and many of its internal river systems it would take monumental efforts to dislodge them and more often than not unorthodox strategies had to be utilized by the increasingly neutered West Frankish Carolingian Kings starting with Charles the bald who reigned until 877 in a state of near perpetual warfare waged against his brothers his Nobles and probably least importantly as far as he was concerned the Vikings in 850 a certain Danish seeking named Rorick was offered a part of the wild freedom coastline as a fiefdom on behalf of the West Frankish state in order that he might stave off further Viking raids this was a policy that would be attempted many more times as the years went on with varying degrees of success it was also a foreshadowing of what was to come two generations later more successfully with Rollo though Vikings did continue to attack freesia again and again in the ensuing years Rorick soil team doesn't seem to have been taken into question and eventually he may have converted to Christianity though by age 63 he was finally driven out apparently after neglecting his duties the experiment was again repeated two decades later when the then king of East Frankia and at times west Frankia Charles the fat granted the lands formally administered by Rorick to a new figure a Dane called godfrid he however was far less successful than Rorick doing little to stop viking attacks and possibly colluding with them before finally being driven out by the local nobility in 885 by this time the once prosperous town of dorestad had become almost entirely depopulated due to the sheer levels of violence and instability that had become the norm in northern Frankie [Music] upon Charles the balls death in 877 he was succeeded to the throne by his son Louis the stammerer who died in 879 before he could achieve any sort of authority just to add more to the hopeless situation of the West Frank's the next in line to the throne was a boy King Charles later to be known down the ages as the simple whose life story and eventual fate of being locked up in a tower by his own Nobles would be repeated for centuries to come as the perfect parable of poor King moonship meanwhile a powerful new Viking leader with an already well-established reputation as a winner of battles and a gold giver had begun to make inroads amongst the Vikings active in Frankia his contemporaries knew him as Rollo and sometimes the Walker according to the notoriously biased family historian dude oh of st. quintain patron of the later norman dukes this was because he was too well-built to ride a horse and was thus forced to go everywhere on foot in 876 Rallo who said to have seized the important town of ruin his future capital though it remains unclear whether he permanently held it from this point onwards or whether it had been a temporary raid nonetheless a decade later at the head of one of the largest Viking fleets ever assembled Rallo seems to have been one of the Vikings who came within a stone's throw of season Paris and stamping out the central power of West Frankia and Tyler just as Alfred of Wessex clung on for dear life across the channel against his own share of Viking Marauders intent on extinguishing his realm as Rallo and another equally famed warlord named Siegfried increasingly came to the fore the darkest days of Viking Age Frankia were about to begin as with most early medieval Scandinavians who hailed from a preliterate society overwhelmingly based on oral tradition rather than the written word much of rolos early life remain shrouded in mystery just like the other famed Vikings such as Ragnar lothbrok and Ivar the boneless who likely encouraged tales of their deeds during their own lifetimes it remains difficult to find the ever elusive genuine historical figure behind the legend it was during the time of rolos grandson richard the fearless that the first attempt to paint an accurate picture of the famed Vikings life was made when Richard hired a historian dudo of st. contained to write a history of Rallos life of course as with nearly all medieval documents do doze history was written in order to legitimize his patrons the norman political elites and thus to paint a heroic picture of their recent ancestors nonetheless because of the very short time between doodahs writing and Rolo's actual life some kernels of truth must inevitably remain in the work according to dieudo Rallos father is said to have been a fiercely independent lord who bowed to no man though this may well be a later addition to stress the purported independence of normandy against the Frankish crown according to do doze accounts Rollo's father was a regional the Isle tributary to an unnamed Danish king upon the death of his father Rollo was forced out of his lands to seek a new beginning yet as with most origin stories from this period the tale grew in the telling by the 12th century Rallos father being Norwegian and in loyal subjects of the great unifier of Norway Harald fairhair fair is said to have lived to a fine old age possibly well into his 70s or even his 80s towards the end of his life however he began to delegate to his son Erik later known as blood axe due to his ferocity and ruthlessness whereas under Harald a certain amount of freedom have been allowed amongst the regional nobility under Erik no such considerations were made as soon as the old veteran King breathed his last breath blood axes men are said to have descended upon Rallos farm to seize his birthright butchering his brother and his father and forcing the young man into exile on the high seas it's a fine story though in reality we can't be sure whether Rollo was even Norwegian with various other traditions suggesting Danish roots as regularly as North swamis nevertheless like many Vikings during this turbulent time it remains probable that Rollo had indeed been fleeing from some sort of political turmoil at home and before long he began to develop a reputation for himself as a useful companion and sword for hire [Music] it remains unclear where Rolo spent his formative years though the latest Argos tend to suggest that he spent much of his time in Britain where according to some sources he fathered sons in the Scottish Isles and probably took part in at least some of the invasions of the great even army that swept through the anglo-saxon kingdoms between 865 and 878 incapacitating all but one it was during these incursions in Britain that Rollo probably began to gather a substantial force of men behind him it was also during this time that he probably earned his nickname the Walker and is said by dudo to have befriended a king in England named al Stan this was almost certainly Guthrum the de facto ruler of the latter stages of the great heathen army who had been christened by Alfred of Wessex as Athelstan after being defeated in 878 and now ruled over East Anglia as anointed king [Music] as early as 874 Rollo is mentioned by judo and a few other sources as having seized Rouen though it remains unclear whether this was a permanent situation or simply an opportunistic raid on the town by 885 however after a brief respite in attacks a vast new horde began to descend upon Paris probably comprising of men from all over the Scandinavian world presumably including men formerly under gothram Athelstan now neutered by his peace agreement with alfred in 885 as soon as the winter snows melted this huge force said by some to have numbered in the tens of thousands though in reality probably being far fewer than that descended like a deluge upon the countryside of northern Frankia laying it to waste and carrying off huge amounts of plunder back to their long boats like Rollo many of the man in the army were probably outlaws in some sense from their homelands and like the great heathen army that had ravaged England during the previous decades it comprised of a number of loosely allied war bands unified under the nominal overlordship of a sea king named Sigfrid himself apparently a veteran of the great even army this vast force the largest Viking army of the age of the Frankish sources are to be believed descended upon Paris in 885 to lay siege to the beating heart of the last vestiges of the Carolingian state the timing was impeccable as the franks short-sighted ly preoccupied themselves with internal troubles elsewhere in their vast realm if Sigfrid Rallo and the Vikings had succeeded in taking Paris in that year that the France we know today might well have been very different with its power base potentially located elsewhere in Paris finally after a lengthy and brutal yet inconclusive siege an arrangement was made which allowed Sigfrid and his warriors to bypass Paris and raid deep to the south into Burgundy a rebellious province that the King Charles the fat opted to see attacked rather than his own Lance it was a much maligned decision but it was one that arguably saved Paris within three years however Charles was deposed his family's line replaced by a new dynasty the Roberti ins led by the former count of Paris odo or should end on a wave of popularity after his victory against the Vikings Frankia was thrown back into yet more turmoil between warring factions Rollo remained active in northern Frankia for well over a decade to come time and time again he utilized the now incumbent Frankish instability as a ladder to grow his own numbers and power probably gaining new recruits in the form of noir scales out stood from Dublin in 902 as well as Vikings from all over the rest of Europe Rollo and his mand continued their piratical activities for years perhaps from their power base at Rouen until finally in 9/10 they were halted and trapped by the city of sharks by the new king of West Frankia the one-time successor to Charles the bold deemed too young to rule at the time of his father's death but now due to Odo's death and a resurgence of support for the Carolingians in west Frankia a king in his prime like his grandfather and his great grandfather Charlemagne the new king was called Charles though he would be remembered under a different epithet Charles the simple just like the English King Ethelred the unready would later do against his own attackers riving directly from denmark in the 10th and early 11th century Charles's predecessors had often paid vast sums of Dane gelt to get the Vikings to go away by the early 10th century however after more than seven decades of intense and consistent attacks the West Frankish Treasury simply had no more to give modern estimates suggest that around one-third of all West Frankish coins in circulation had already been looted or given away as Dane dealt up to this point one thing was now overwhelmingly obvious to Charles who had barely managed to navigate his way through the political Maelstrom at the end of the 9th century a new strategy was needed instead of Dane gelt Charles would go back to an old experiment not tried in decades he would offer Rollo now a veteran warrior perhaps in his mid-50s who had been raiding around Europe since he was 15 an opportunity to legitimately settle down in the lands he had already seized in return for pledging allegiance to the West Frankish crown and defending its borders against other Vikings it was a win-win situation for Charles whose dynasty hadn't in fact controlled Rao's new territory for over 30 years like his old comrade gothram just over the sea in East Anglia Rollo graciously accepted the Kings offer turning him overnight from little more than a brigand albeit a powerful one into an anointed and legitimized European ruler in time this arrangement would transform Rallos unruly band of pagan warriors into a class of landed aristocrats for the most part now far more concerned with clinging on to their own lands rather than claimant new ones Charles is unfortunate later fate and his epithet the simple in fact do a great disservice to his achievements more so than any other act by a Frankish king during this period Charles's actions not only may have saved his country but also created a strong potential ally to police his northern borders there was another clause in the deal of course one that probably meant little to the Vikings at the time but much to the Frankish king Rollo and his entire band of warriors were baptized and brought into the Christian faith [Music] we can imagine that the baptisms were probably taken with a great deal of salt at the time with some of rolos man allegedly returning to Charles's priests several times over to try their luck again after they realized that the fine baptismal garments would be given to the warriors after they were submerged in the holy water in an effort to flatter his benefactor dude Richard The Fearless in the early 11th century dudo added yet more color to the tale of Rollins life in a direct precursor to the Future relationship of Normandy to the Frankish crown Charles apparently asked Rollo to kiss his foot as a symbolic gesture of fealty instead of accepting Rollo deferred the gesture to one of his warriors a towering giant of a man upon approaching Charles the warrior obliged the King's request to kiss his foot yanking his foot upward stays mouths in order to do it and pulling Charles entirely off his feet and hurling him onto the ground in the process much to the mirth of rolos warriors standing by however likely it is that dude o story is an outright fabrication added in at a later date the implication remains as clear today as it was when it was first written the Normans would play ball they would support the French kings but only when it suited them and as long as the King stayed out of their business gone were the days of the all-powerful Carolingian monarchs how far the descendants of Charlemagne had fallen quite paradoxically it would be the establishment of a largely independent Viking state in northern France that would seal the beginning of the end of the French Viking Age and in all likelihood saved the kingdom that would eventually become known as France it wasn't long before semblance of order was finally restored to West Franklin with a strong buffer zone now existing to the north doubling earth was a beacon to Viking raiders looking to settle down and retire Charles had succeeded in saving his nation though there was no going back from the factionalism caused by the Viking attacks regional magnates in provinces as far away as burgundy brittany languid ah and normandy now regularly wielded just as much power as the West Frankish king a title which became little more than a status symbol in all but name West's Frankia was now the realm of a multitude of kings it was one of these powerful hereditary families the Roberti ins now led by Odo's brother Robert that deposed Charles in 923 who at the time was largely propped up by Rolo's Normans the coalition of noblemen imprisons Charles in a tower and after Robert's death put their own man on the throne instead Rudolf formerly the Duke of Burgundy whilst in all likelihood Rallos Warriors retained their pagan waves until their deaths their descendants would fairly quickly become devout Christian and integral though difficult allies to the Frankish crown particularly the increasingly beleaguered and often dethroned Carolinians unlike the earlier experiments of Rorick and godfrid Rollo did his best to keep his side of the bargain rebuilding far-flung churches and Abbey's long burnt out since the days of Ragnar lothbrok even Rollo seems to have converted or at least hedged his bets by placing Jesus alongside Odin and Thor in the process Rallos band who increasingly became known as Normans retained control over some of the finest farmland in the country perhaps even more so than his one-time comrade gothram over in East Anglia Rollo demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt over the next decades he his sons and his grandsons would rapidly adopt French customs language and fighting styles and in doing so would mould the Normans into one of the most powerful fighting forces in all of Western Europe [Music] [Music] interestingly despite all of the political turmoil boiling over in West Frankia over the next decade seeing Charles not only locked up by his own Nobles to live out the rest of his days in miserable isolation and also forever tarnished with the name the simple Rollo actually seems to have remained loyal to his feudal overlord sending a band of warriors ultimately unsuccessfully to fight on the Kings behalf against his many enemies in the wake of Charles's imprisonment Rollo had been able to use the turmoil to expand his own lands to the south playing off rivals against one another to maintain his own position his capital of ruin was destined to become one of the foremost trading hubs of northern Europe eventually second in size and importance only to Paris surpassing the old trading center of dorestad and rivaling the already well-established Viking cities of your Vic and Dublin as far as the already downtrodden and violently harassed Frankish peasantry were concerned the foundation of Normandy likely amounted to little more than a change in the local landlord just like in the Viking conquest of Northumbria in the 1860s Rollo left the clergy largely intact though his numbers were also bolstered by refugees fleeing from the increasingly successful West Saxon reconquest of the Danelaw undertaken by the heirs of Alfred prior to his death Rollo hedged his bets by giving large amounts of gold to the clergy yet he also sacrificed one hundred prisoners to Odin he was succeeded by his son and heir with a Frankish noblewoman William longsword who would begin to enthusiastically fuse together the Viking ferocity of his patrilineal heritage with the shrewd Frankish statesmanship of his matrilineal family a successful establishment of Normandy in the early 10th century coupled with failed attempts at colonizing the neighboring province of Brittany and the newfound supremacy of English Kings across the channel Viking activity in West Frankia declined rapidly occasional raids continued into the 11th century but nothing on the scale of the invasions of the ninth century the Viking Age would soon be over but a Norman one was about to begin [Music] [Music]

Channel: History Time

Views: 1,055,093

Rating: 4.8618236 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, rollo, the real rollo, normans, the normans, norman conquest, vikings, vikings rollo, viking rollo, rollo normandy], rollo normandy, rollo norman, frankish, franks, early middle ages france, early medieval france

Id: zvaZuKryQPQ

Length: 33min 45sec (2025 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 21 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Spintherism]

Great Share thanks (:

[u/ellemae86]

Before I even started watching Vikings, I looked my family history up and traced my lineage to 437 AD and in that lineage I am a direct descendant of Rollo. Really enjoyed the show even though a lot of it is fictional but many events are real.