First Duke of Normandy
There he was in his tomb, and I hadn’t the faintest idea
who he was, except that
he must have been an ancestor of William the Conqueror, first Norman king of England.
Rollo (spelled
Rollon by the French) was first Duke of Normandy (855-931), and
this was all the brass plaque beside him in Rouen Cathedral communicated.

I immediately knew I’d consult my old history text (an English history) as soon as I got
home, and I expected that in the story of Rollo, I would discover much about the
beginning of the ancient province of Normandy, so important in the forming of both
England and France. I found even more.
"Go forth and Multiply!"
Rollo was a Norwegian Viking. Histories of these people surmise that a reason for their
raids over Europe from Russia to Italy may have been overpopulation of the narrow
fjiords, for they were polygamous pagans who multiplied like rabbits. Anyone who has
ever wondered why so many European royalty are related might be satisfied with the
answer that the Vikings--swarthy, ruthless, conquering--set out to rule the globe. A
partial family tree reveals only some of their influence on the English royal bloodline beginning with the Norman kings and continuing through the Plantagenet dynasty via
Matilda’s child.
Mother of the Henrys.
Matilda, known as "Mother of the Henrys," was descended from Rollo. She was
daughter of Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy, wife of Emperor Henry V
of Germany, and mother of Henry II, first Plantagenet King of England, Duke of
Normandy, and father of Richard, the Lionhearted. Her bones have been gathered from
Le Bec-Hellouin and are also reposited in Rouen Cathedral. Note that she
was wife of the German Emperor Henry V, so a German line, too, would have
been connected to Rollo had not Henry V been the last of the German Salian Dynasty.
Through her son, Henry II, by her second marriage, she passed on a few of Rollo’s genes
to the Plantagenet Dynasty.
Tudors and Stuarts.
Next up on the English throne were the Tudors, and the first of them, Henry VII, married
Elizabeth of York, a Plantagenet, in 1486. In his attempt to strengthen the Tudor
claim to the throne by linking it to the previous kingship line, he passed a drop of Rollo’s
blood (via Matilda’s descendants) on down to Elizabeth I, who takes us to 1603. Then
through Mary, Queen of Scots, great-granddaughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (the Plantagenet in the Tudor line) and her child, James I, the
Stuart dynasty still has a speck of Norman/Viking blood pulsing in royal veins until 1714.
That’s enough geneology for me, so I won’t try to link the House of
Hanover to Rollo, but I’ll bet a molecule of Norwegian Viking is in Elizabeth II.
The real mystery to me is no longer the origin of English kings, but why on earth I want
this brutal, uncivilized, overgrown, red-haired pillager of beautiful Normandy to have
sired all the kings of England! I also wonder why the sculptor rendered him in such
sweet, delicate white likeness, far different from what skimpy reports tell us
of his appearance.
"Pay me and I’ll leave you alone."
Vikings conquered with terror. When they killed a man, they burned his living wife on
top of his body. They could sack a city at night and get away in their state-of-the-art ships
before anyone could be organized to go after them. After doing this repeatedly, they
asked their victims to pay them to go away, and all the victims had left was their land.
This is how the Danes got the huge stretch of land called the Danelaw (northeast of a line
from London to Chester) from King Alfred in England, and it’s how Rollo got Normandy
from King Charles the Simple in France. Rollo’s ancestors had sacked Rouen in 841 and
Paris in 845. Forty-some years later, they threatened Paris with 700 ships and a force of
40,000 warriors. At this point, Charles the Fat gave them silver, bribing them to go away,
and he also gave them permission to pillage further up the
Seine--Normandy! In 911, Rollo forced the Treaty with Charles the Simple that
handed over Normandy to him. One tale has it that when asked to kiss Charles’ feet in
return, he sent one of his warriors to do it, and the warrior made such a violent mockery
of it that he knocked the King out of his chair so that all had a good laugh at the giver of
gifts.
Viking independence.
Even today, I believe we can see in Rouen remnants of the northern conquerors: the
harbor that is still fondly regarded, the monuments to the sea, the fine woolen industry,
corbelled timber homes, and a disregard for what is Parisian. Alfred the Great of England
and his progeny were able to reconquer the Danelaw there only by long planning
and ingenuity, but France had no monarch so strong, wise, and revered. The church had
more success with subduing the Vikings in Normandy than did any central government,
and so Rollo was baptised in Rouen, but still prayed to pagan gods and offered them human
sacrifices. Fighting feudal lords were far enough from any central government that
many "situations" degenerated into total anarchy, such as questions of whether underling
knights should be able to build those early Norman castles we love to visit. Lords
sometimes let knights build castles to bribe them into military service. In this way, the
lords paid homage to their Dukes (Rollo and his heirs) when called upon for service, and
many a castle privilege had to be given away to bribe knights into fighting with William
the Conqueror when he invaded England in 1066. (Pre-feudal "loyalty" of a subject to his
king had evaded the Viking Normans!)
Fate dressed in Norse clothing.
England had thought they had driven out some and subdued the remainder of the northern
folk, and they had stopped the invasions for 80 years! But the Anglo-Saxons were
so apprised of William’s fierceness, they didn’t put up much of a fight at the battle of
Hastings in 1066. Besides, 25% of them were Dane by now! (They must have regarded their invaders as Fate, a force that
couldn’t be stopped and "still crazy after all these years.") Even by this time, one
and a half centuries after Rollo took over Normandy, the Normans still had no laws when
they invaded England. All they had was ruthless fierceness and great ambition. In
England, they didn’t luxuriate in the isolation that had sustained them on the Norman
coast, for the English embrace their conquerors! Land exchanged hands, and immediately
Anglo-Norman feudalism began as an absolute necessity to restructure the monarchy that
had been deposed. The Anglo-Saxon kings had been the best England would ever see.
(Alfred was the only one ever to be called "the Great"!) Now the institution of kingship
was forever damaged, no longer resting on the ability of the king to win over his subjects with his wisdom, ingenuity and concern for his people. Now a land-based contract could
be broken by either party, but most likely by the king, with fiefdoms used for bribery and
intimidation. The decline of the English monarchy was underway.
Normandy always means so much!
Not quite this much ran through my head as I was regarding the tomb of Rollo or
Rollon--but close! Both in Normandy and in the Loire Valley, we can’t escape the
inroads of English history into French and vice versa. (No wonder there is so much to
"put in order" in Rouen!) Walking the streets there, one senses all this historical
significance and cross-referencing. I’m not sure how the arrangement of scenes
accomplishes it, but the historical narrative plays on the visual imagery and that on the
memory. Street scenes and sites of Rouen encapsulate multiple time periods and various
peoples, and though others may do the same, Rouen is different.
This is Normandy.
This province thrills history buffs with rich implication, all so familiar, all a part
of patterns we’ve learned. From shop windows to beach scenes, cathedrals, and harbors,
we somehow already know Normandy in multiple dimensions, only manageable when we
contemplate them one at a time. Here, that’s difficult, because everything has so
much significance--from medieval to twentieth-century, artistic, political, historic!
Not just once, but every time Normandy has figured in history, it has been the
key to unlocking a huge event that determines the future of several nations.
Normandy is never just a place. All over this province, from D-day beaches to the
tomb of Rollo, the visitor is intensely engaged with significance and meaning. (Rest
assured that planners have an even greater job of sorting and categorizing all that is Norman.) It’s so important, yet Rollo wouldn’t kiss a king? No, he had in mind to
reproduce a few!