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From: "A DesCartes" <>
Subject: Re: #7 Re: [DNA] `Ultra-Norse`..who is making up this stuff? / Normandy study
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 18:52:36 -0400
References: <e468a0040608251738v66686371kc63abc0c0f8dba84@mail.gmail.com> <004201c6c8be$cccb8830$86139a8e@PeterAKincaid> <e468a0040608260728w4751e92dg1aa89d67db015c77@mail.gmail.com> <REME20060826170552@alum.mit.edu> <e468a0040608261708u4d915ad8ra95a593d243b6b5f@mail.gmail.com> <REME20060827142509@alum.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <REME20060827142509@alum.mit.edu>


On 8/27/06, John Chandler <> wrote:
>
> DesCartes wrote:
> > Not at all accurate. Who grew the crops in Scandinavia? Local
> > peasant farmers did.
>
> We were talking about the Normans, not about Scandinavians back home.
> I repeat: the Normans were wielders of swords and certainly preferred
> that activity to farming, or else they would have stayed home.



They were not `normans` until the generations following their settlement
their- They were as a settlement denotes- SETTLERS. There is every latitude
to discuss HOW heavily Rollo was able to plant his own people throughout the
region, but what cannot be denied (although I doubt that would stop you) is
that Rollo did plant them, and they stayed there.

> ``History shows`` that Normandy was
> > a STRATIFIED society, with peasants, clergy and nobles.
>
> Exactly. And the peasants and clergy were all home-grown, while the
> nobles formed a thin overlay of outsiders who achieved their position
> by force of arms.


You are free to argue this, but in Britain, we usually discern SETTLEMENT of
a population by the appearance of its place names..No? The Y-DNA study
finding low level I1a amongst Low Normandy chose LOW Normandy not at random,
but for a reason.

Low Normandy is rife with Scandinavian-derived placenames as compared to
High Normandy, which is not. In High Normandy the early Scandinavian
settlement and placenames are absent, although this land as well was under
the overlordship of the normans. You cant have it both ways.

http://www.viking.no/e/france/place_name_map.html



> If I am looking to
> > make a settlement as opposed to raid (which was the case in this
> instance),
> > and I have a burgeoning population at home that I am looking to find
> room
> > for (which was the impetus for colonization),
>
> You seem to have missed out on the facts of the case. The Norman
> presence in Normandy was the result of negotiation with the Franks.
> They came to an agreement whereby the Normans took control of a
> certain tract, under French sovereignty, in return for agreeing to
> stop raiding. The result was a tremendous personal gain for the
> Normans empowered by the agreement, which gave them feudal rights in a
> pre-existing hierarchy, but it did nothing to solve the problem of
> overpopulation back in Scandinavia. Your whole fairy tale of Norse
> "Lebensraum" in Normandy is a fantasy.


You have lost the factual debate. Their are multiple other instances of the
Carolingians `giving` lands over to viking raiders, with the expectation
that they would plunder them and leave off from Paris, etc and return home,
and if need be later on they could be forced off militarily when it was
advantageous / logistically possible for Charles.
``William of Jumieges- And so Rollo, appointed as leader, plotted with his
men to demolish Paris, scheming in his sly heart and thirsting with a pagan
instinct for the blood of Christians the way a wolf does``
Charles already had been told by his court advisers that Rouen in Normandy
was laid waste so he offerd them a territory they had already depleted so as
to protect unravaged lands.
The Norman dialect also is seperate from french... it was adapted / adopted
by outsiders. http://www.viking.no/e/france/norman_on_words.htm


> My point is that Scandinavians were on the move because of their own
> population explosion. The idea that they risked depopulating their
homeland
> or couldnt fit enough of them inot their boats...come on, give me a
> break!!!

No one ever suggested that there weren't enough Scandinavians to
support an emigration movement, nor even that they couldn't have
migrated en masse if there had been an opportunity for such. The
point is that the deal the Vikings made with the French included a
whole province, already populated with French-speaking peasants
tilling the fields. There was no need to send back to Scandinavia
for reinforcements to share in the booty, nor any reason for other
Norsemen to come to Normandy as peasants, which were already in
plentiful supply. This is not to deny that the high-status Norse
would have a tendency to increase their proportion of the local Y DNA
over time, but that process is very far from a replacement.


Flodoard of Reims<http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Flodoard%20of%20Reims>who
in partiuclar wrote that: "
*After the war that Count Robert waged against the Northmen at
Chartres<http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Chartres>;,
certain maritime pagi, along with the city of
Rouen<http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Rouen>(which they had
nearly destroyed) and other pagi which were subjected to it,
were conceded to them, and they agreed to take up the faith of Christ.*"
Charles surrendered claim to lands that had already been destroyed, as per
his own court officials accounts. There were no settled peasants `hangin
around` to see if the folks who, a few weeks earlier, had plundered and
assaulted their principle town might have a `change of heart`. Rollo`s
forces were still Pagan and had no `moral` restrain of any nature.

> We know for a fact that the Normans actually expanded their holdings to
> include neighboring provinces, populated by locals- IN LATER YEARS. If
you
> knew people were coming who killed everyone they encountered and had done
so
> time and again, you be either organizing to fight them or running for the
> hills. The Gauls did not fight, but ceded the territory, so during the
> inital settlement, we can reasonably assume which reflex kicked in the old
> `fight or flight` response.

Gauls??? You seem to have missed out on about a millennium of history.
It was, in fact, the Franks who ceded the territory as a feudal grant
to the North Men, while retaining suzerainty. You need to stop your
"reasonable assuming" and look at the actual history.

Gaul / Gaulish is used to this day as Franco-specific. The Kingdom of the
Franks covered Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Holland...etc. I am typing at
this moment with a denier of Lothar II 855-869 on my computer table. the
problem I have had with identifying this Carolingian coins specific
origin is that it was legal tender in a territory that stretched from todays
Hollland to Italy.
The local Gaulish forces did not fight...I do not assert that the forces
throughout the empire were ever consulted.

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