Rollo: The Viking Warrior Who Forged A Kingdom

More than 1,000 years ago, a new menace appeared in Western Europe. A viking warrior thirsty for gold. His name was Rollo. He had a certain charisma. He clearly was intelligent. He was a born leader of men. At the head of his band of pirates, he roamed the seas, plundered the countryside and unleashed a wave of terror on the population. There's a kind of gangster period where you have this image of biker gangs that appear and attack and then disappear again. His victims could find no way to stop the viking hordes. Until a surprising political twist. Instead of having to fight me again and again, you could hire me to protect the regions which are constantly being attacked by vikings. Turned a pirate chief into the founder of an empire. He was the only one to go on to found a lasting dynasty and not any dynasty. This is the incredible story of the birth of Normandy, land of the Northmen. In 843, at the Treaty of Verdun, the Carolingian Empire was divided into three kingdoms by Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son. France doesn't yet exist. It's called West Francia and it corresponds to two-thirds of the current France. Its people are known as the Franks. Its northwest region is called Neustria. Its capital is Paris. It is blessed with miles of coastline, with two great rivers, the Seine and the Loire and with green forests and fertile soil. It's a part of this region that will become Normandy and it owes its birth to a stranger, a viking from the North. His name is Rollo. He was known as Rollo the Walker because he was too tall to ride any horse that he was so larger than life. So instead he just had to walk and his stride was so great. I think this is probably a little bit of an exaggeration but he certainly had a charisma even at a young age. In a little less than three decades, this bloodthirsty pirate will become the first master of Normandy and he'll make it one of the most powerful duchies of the Frankish kingdom. His extraordinary achievement is the culmination of a century of conflict. It all began at the end of the 8th century in northern Europe and Scandinavia. Norwegian, Danish or Swedish, the Scandinavians lead harsh lives in cold, unforgiving lands. They are all pagans worshipping several gods. Some live off the sea, others are hunters, loggers or craftsmen. But first and foremost, they're peaceful traders. They trade local products like animal skins and reindeer antlers as well as luxury items like jewelry and gold. There were some natural resources in Scandinavia which could be traded abroad. For example, furs, iron, walrus ivory as well could be acquired there and traded further on to the rest of Europe. Their success in commerce puts them in increasing contact with their neighbours to the south. These rich territories become an obvious temptation. Soon the merchants' scales will be replaced with swords and axes. Those merchants are now turning into scavengers and before long into proper professional looters. It's basically about how do we get easy money. So this is why we group all those activities, the trading and the raiding in the same package of maritime expansion. It feels a bit opportunistic. For more than a century, these young adventurous Vikings, the Norse word for pirates, will plunder all of Europe from north to south and from east to west. Their main targets are religious buildings, monasteries and churches. They choose these because they are both essentially unguarded just by old monks or young boys and they are very wealthy because as a sign of piety, of course, lots of lavish donations have been given to the church and so this is like winning the lottery for the Vikings. A successful Viking raid always employs the same winning tactics, speed and surprise. You have these groups, small units that are incredibly mobile and very quick to be able to kind of adopt their tactics and to change their location. So they have a much greater flexibility than, say, a large group of infantry or a land army which is much slower to move around, much slower to transport and reliant on fixed bases in terms of supplies and equipment and so on. They arrive, they pillage, they take all the precious objects, gold, silver and jewellery, especially gems, and they leave immediately. Their arms full of treasure. It is this kind of very quick hit and run, what they tend to call it over here is the kind of gangster period where you have this image of biker gangs that appear and attack and then disappear again. And before they leave, the Vikings set fire to the monasteries to terrorise the whole area. Often they slaughter any monks who try to flee. People are horrified by this sacrilege. By attacking sacred places, the pagan pirates gain a reputation as barbarians. They describe them as wolves, as marauders, as pirates, as heathens who have come only to destroy, as unthinking brutes, savage men of the north. And when you think that the Christian church have been incredibly strong in Europe and in France for quite a long time, that this image of this kind of pagan horde descending from the north in their ships with these dragon heads and the violence of it, that they kind of just erupt almost onto the political scene, I think that would have struck an awful lot of fear into the hearts of people. The Vikings are waging psychological warfare. This brutality means that their next targets will already be terrified and submissive. As a persistent image that the Vikings have been sent by God to punish the sins of the Franks, he has sent the northmen from the north to punish us. West Francia is particularly hard hit. It suffers waves of violent raids and attacks. There seems to be no way of stopping them. Most of your enemies in this period, in the 9th century, are at your frontiers. They may come over the frontier to attack you, you know where they live, you can go over and attack them. The problem with the Vikings is they come out of nowhere, they attack you and then they disappear to nowhere again. Their expeditions only last three or four days. The Vikings fill their trunks with looted treasure, then return home to melt down all that gold. With no standing army, the king of West France, Charles the Bald, can't lay a finger on them. With the empire divided, there's no Frankish power strong enough to stop them. This game of cat and mouse lasts for more than a century. But in the mid-9th century, the expeditions take on a whole new dimension. Gone are the little bands of Vikings. Now real armadas of hundreds of boats start going further and further inland and plundering entire cities. They're sometimes made up of several thousand men and have a leader at their head. Soon, Rollo will be one of them. The man of the north who will forever mark the history of France. His origins back in Scandinavia remain obscure. He was born around 855, probably in Norway. A small local lord in his homeland, he was stripped of his inheritance and had to go into exile. He goes plundering in the north of Norway. And there, he's brought to justice and banished. So he has to leave. He spends some time in England, then appears on the coast of Nostria. To begin with, he only has a small band of Vikings. But the future Normandy now becomes his favorite prey. Normandy has a couple of advantages for the Vikings. You have easy access to it because it has a large coastline. It is relatively wealthy. The local rulers don't yet have the authority to resist the Vikings. So it is kind of the worst of all combinations or the best of all combinations for the Vikings. It's wealthy and weak. It was just like a gold mine, basically, for them. Lots of opportunities for plundering. He starts by devastating the region's coasts. Since all the treasure has long been stolen by previous looters, he has two options left. The first is to demand that the local authorities pay a heavy ransom just to make him go away. After all, that's what Vikings do. What they were counting on at this point was to avoid actually fighting, but just using their reputation and the force of persuasion of having a Viking army besieging a city to ask for the payment of some kind of tribute. So they're making a threat, asking for money for actually leaving without destroying anything. Rollo's other option is to go even further, sailing inland up the rivers. He's quite capable of this since he and his men possess a formidable war machine, their ships. They were able to get basically anywhere where you had water. They were sailing up rivers to attack towns. They were sailing along the coasts. So it's the kind of ship that can travel both over open ocean, but it's also suitable for navigation on rivers and inland waterways. And it's a really, really versatile ship type. These dracars, as they are called, are entirely unique. The Viking ship is an achievement, an exceptional innovation, without which there would have never been any Viking raids. It truly is the weapon of the Vikings' success. Giants of the sea. They measure up to 100 feet long and 15 feet wide and can reach a speed of up to 10 knots. The Viking longships could cover about 100 nautical miles in a day at top speeds. An army, if it had access to a good Roman road, could march maybe 10 miles, 15 miles a day. So the Vikings were just faster than everyone else. They are both unique and innovative. The basic system is clinker-built construction. That is, the upper external planks overlap the lower planks downward, like the tiles of a roof. A technique that makes the infrastructure both lightweight and strong. A mast of more than 40 feet high and a square sail allows them to catch the wind. If not, they can use the oars. The hull is supported by a keel that's all in one piece and only a few inches deep. So the boats have flat bottoms, a vital asset. They could navigate on shallow water, so they didn't need much water to be able to moor their ships in comparison to other types of ships, which would need several meters of water to be able to moor. So that means they could basically moor the ship on a beach or very close by, which meant that they could get very close to their point of destination. They're also sturdy. Oak frames and pine rigging were strong but flexible. Viking shipbuilders took great care in their construction. What they would go out and look for in the forest there is to find branches that grew in the particular shape of the piece that they needed, because again, they preserved the strength of the fibers then. So they're not taking a straight tree and then cutting out a piece shaped like this, that they would find a branch that had grown with that natural curve. And all in all, the kind of man hours involved in building that, it ended up in and around 50,000 man hours. It can sound like quite a high estimate, but that's just the ship itself. That's not including the time that would have been needed to spin the wool to make the sail, to go out into the forest and gather materials for lime bass, to make the rigging, to dig up all of the iron ore, to make the ship's rivers and so on. So it's an incredibly time-consuming process. As these Viking ships surge inland, the Franks scramble to fortify their rivers. It's the only way to stop the Vikings' advance. One river is particularly strategic, the Seine, which crosses Neustria from one end to the other. Since 841, the river's valley has been infested with Vikings. What attracts them is the Seine, the Bay of the Seine, which allows them, with their ships, to go up into the heart of France. So about 12 miles out of Rouen, spanning the river, the Franks build a fortified bridge, the Petre Bridge. It's a monumental dam. It has a span of over 500 yards and takes 10 years to build. Armored towers called castellum stand at either end, protecting the entrances to the bridge and sheltering the garrisons defending it. They are made of stone. The bridge itself is made of wood but rests on a stone base. It consists of a total of 22 archers that can be closed by harrows, metal sliding grids intended to block the passage of Viking ships. These bridges are operating almost a little bit like castles do in a later period, as potential strong points, secure points, which you can continue to hold on to, that either will prevent passage, ideally, of the Vikings coming in, or even if they do get in, make it difficult for them to then get back out and become a thorn in their side, potentially behind their lines. For the first time, a bridge is built on a river to stop the maritime traffic. It is really an adequate answer to this technique of Viking raids. In 885, this new defense is put to the test. Rollo is part of a Viking armada sailing up the Seine. Its objective is to go and plunder the rich province of Burgundy. On its way, the armada will encounter many obstacles, including Paris, which has fortified bridges of its own. But first, it must get past the Petre bridge and the Frankish army that defends it. The soldiers would be in the fort. They could cross the bridges and fire down at the Viking boats. And any attempt to capture the bridge, you'd have to capture the fortresses on either end first, or at least on one end first. And that was very difficult to do. You needed siege equipment. And generally speaking, the Vikings are not bringing siege equipment, for obvious reasons, on their ships as they're sailing up rivers. A great Danish leader called Siegfried raised this army of over 10,000 Vikings. Divided into contingents, they each answer to a sub-chief. Rollo is one of them. And he has a plan to crush the Frankish defense. Rollo had developed an original technique to wipe this Frank force out. It was quite likely that he'd find himself outnumbered. So, he built a camp. This camp is just half a mile from the bridge. All around it, Rollo has a deep ditch dug with ramparts of earth. But he leaves a huge entrance that's like an open door. It's an invitation. He wants to lure the Franks into the camp. In close quarters, they won't be able to use their cavalry or organize pitched battles. Faced with a well-constituted and well-trained Frankish army, the Vikings are not a professional army of infantrymen nor of horsemen. They are still more or less backpackers. So, they will use all the weapons they can use to avoid facing the Franks in pitched battles. Cunning is the Vikings' best weapon. And Rollo's works perfectly. He hides the number of men he has. They pretend to be asleep as well. He has them all lie down in the center. And the poor Frankish leader rides in thinking he's caught the Vikings. He can smash them only to have them all pop up and rout the Franks. It's a fatal mistake. The Franks have to take on Rollo's men in hand-to-hand combat. And at that, the Vikings are formidable. Most of the Franks are massacred. The Vikings still have to take the bridge. But the guards, knowing what carnage there's been in the camp, are terrified. They hardly put up any resistance. The Vikings have no trouble getting close enough to set fire to the bridge. This obstacle has cost the Vikings four months. But they've made it through. They're another step closer to Burgundy. But first, they'll have to face another obstacle and a bigger one, Paris. Historians aren't sure, but Rollo may well have been part of that adventure too. The 24th of November, 885, with horror, Parisians spy the largest Viking fleet ever seen on the Seine approaching the city. The Frankish sources give 30,000 to 40,000 Viking soldiers, probably dealing with about 20,000, but that's still a really significant army. At the time, Paris is just one island, today's Ile de la Cité, surrounded by a Gallo-Roman wall lined with turrets. It is the largest city in the kingdom, with a population of many thousands. To obtain the right of passage through Paris, the Vikings first go down the diplomatic route. There's a meeting between Siegfried, the leader of the entire Viking army, and the highest authority in the city, Gauslin, the Bishop of Paris. The idea, again, was to avoid fighting as much as possible, using simply the threat as a way of gaining the payment. But the Bishop doesn't play along. Abbot Gauslin said, no, you shall not go up, our bridges will prevent you. But hearing that, Siegfried, the very next day, decides to cross the barrier by force. It's quite a challenge. Over the last 40 years, Paris has had to withstand three Viking attacks. The city has had to fortify itself. The island is connected to its left bank by the Petit Pont, and to its right bank by the Grand Pont. Both are built on the same model as the Petre Bridge, with a system of arches and harrows. Two towers guard the bridges. Their entrances are protected by solid wooden doors. Their first floor is ringed with openings for the archers. While at the top, a wooden balcony, called a ourle, allows the defenders to throw projectiles at the attackers, while protecting them from enemy arrows. Just two days after their arrival, the Vikings are ready to launch their assault. But where can they attack such a highly fortified city? They spot a breach in the defences. On the tower that closes off the entrance to the Grand Pont, on the right bank, the ourle at the top is unfinished. The Vikings fire a hail of arrows and projectiles at the defenders there. But the Parisians retaliate, and although there are only 200 men, they accomplish quite a feat. They manage to beat back the Vikings on the first day, and then work frantically through the night to construct an extra wooden storey on top of the stone tower. This is clearly working with the strength of desperation, trying to add extra fortification to the tower defending the bridge. The next day, the fighting resumes with even more savagery. Determined to overcome the tower, the Vikings make a ram to batter down its wooden door. The Vikings find a very large tree somewhere nearby, and they cut it down, and they make a battering ram. And the Parisians are shooting arrows and attempting to light the Viking ships on fire as the Vikings are trying to light the French defences on fire. But this is repulsed in a rather clever way by the Franks. They pour hot wax and pitch down. The Vikings lift up their shields, kind of in the old Roman tetsudo formation. Let the pitch and wax seep in between, kind of burning them alive. The fighting lasts for three days. Even though they're outnumbered, the Parisians don't give up. Main source for this is a poem by a monk at Saint-Germain-des-Prés named Abo who describes some of these people having almost action movie-like lines at points. So Ibales of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Abo says, managed to spit seven Vikings on one spear and then shout down to the kitchen, Order for a kebab! Or the 9th century version of that. But again, the second day of attacks on the tower fails. For three days, there will be attacks, burning ships, attacks with rams against the bridge to get past the towers and the bridge's pillars. It's a failure. And that's when Siegfried, blocked, decides to lay siege on Paris. So it's reluctantly that he besieges Paris. There, it's a perfectly organized battle by the Vikings who have built rams, siege instruments, who have put ships with flaming bundles in the river. So they've got a really sophisticated attack system. On the other hand, the Franks have also refined their weaponry by installing a trebuchet at the top of the tower that will do some damage. For almost a year, the Viking attacks continue at a frantic pace. They cannot break the Frankish resistance. But the defenders' morale is weakening. They appeal to the Frankish emperor for aid. October 886, the new emperor, Charles the Fat, approaches Paris along with a sizable army. The emperor sets up on the hill of Montmartre and has his chance to destroy the Vikings. But shockingly, instead of destroying them, he offers them a deal. Not only does he let them through the bridges to go off and plunder Burgundy, he pays them a huge sum to go on their way. The deal comes as a bombshell. Parisians have fought for nothing. The people of Paris are, of course, outraged by this seeming cowardice. What is Charles the Fat doing? He has his chance to destroy the Vikings and instead he pays them off in this humiliating, humiliating payment. They face down the most serious Viking invasion in history in what is now France and won with 200 men. And the price they paid was a tax they had to pay the Vikings anyway. It seems completely contradictory to allow Vikings to penetrate further into the country. But at this time, the king of the Burgundians was in conflict with Charles the Fat. So it could very well be that Charles saw there an opportunity to get someone else to do the dirty job for him. As the Vikings set off to plunder Burgundy, Rollo takes his destiny in hand. His success during this time makes his name. Now his goal is to become a first-rate commander, a man of influence, feared by those in power. For the next 26 years, even if his career is poorly documented, Rollo will do everything to achieve that goal. His first step? To position himself as the great leader of the Vikings. He has all the qualities required for that role. He's in the prime of his fighting life. He is clearly a successful leader because he has a group of other Vikings who are serving with him. He was, in some senses, apparently a born leader of men. For the next decade, he leads an army to plunder England. Then he probably returns to France to lay waste to the valleys of the Loire, the Yonne, the Saône, and the Garonne rivers. Rollo brings the land of the Franks to its knees. But he's still just a looter, a pirate, a thug without a homeland. All that is about to change. Around 898, he's preparing to loot the city of Rouen in Nustria. But this time, something changes. The man from the north has become so threatening that the powers that be are ready to negotiate. Their agreement becomes known as the Pact of Jumièges. And seeing another band arriving with Rollo, the archbishop took the initiative to go up to Rollo and say to him, I protect the inhabitants of Rouen. There is nothing more to plunder. The city has been completely ruined. So I propose that you become the protector of the city. And Rollo was smart enough to accept. And he thus had a certain legitimacy to remain in the Rouen area and pretty much make it his base. I think this is a recognition of kind of the weakness of the Carolingian rule and the effectiveness in Rollo. If he has spent the previous 10 years or so raiding in the countryside, he would be well known as someone who could get things done as a protector of the area. Rollo is now a true leader. But he still lacks legitimacy. He gets that through his marriage to a Frankish woman, the daughter of a prince. Her name is Poppa. For Rollo, it's an alliance that will open the gates of power. Poppa gives him kind of an entree into the minor aristocracy of the area. So he can present himself as not quite as alien as that Viking over there. What this little vignette does tell us is the work that Rollo is doing, even at this stage in his career, to kind of build a legitimate foundation for what later will become the Duchy of Normandy. The people of Rouen may have accepted Rollo and his men, but the rest of the Franks have not. Strangely enough, it's only after suffering a terrible defeat that they'll get it. The battle takes place at Chartres, a town 60 miles south Paris. It is one of the decisive battles of the Middle Ages. A little-known event, but one that will change the course of history. In July 911, Rollo, at the head of an impressive army, is about to launch a violent attack on the city in order to plunder it. During the siege of the city of Chartres, an army made up of Neustrians, under the orders of the Duke of Neustria and the Duke of Burgundy, appears with a large number of battalions. The fighting is ferocious. Rollo fights a desperate battle and almost overcomes the Neustrian and Burgundian forces. Once more, the Vikings have victory within their reach. But suddenly, an unexpected event occurs that will turn the course of the battle. The bishop of the city brought forth this very precious relic, the tunic that the Virgin Mary presumably had been wearing while giving birth to Christ. But he brings this very holy relic on top of the walls to protect the city and show that the protection of the Virgin is on the city. In a Christian medieval context, relics were extremely powerful things. They were able to perform miracles for the believers. This is an extremely strong experience. That's quite likely that the inhabitants of the city felt that they were supported by the Virgin Mary herself in attacking the Vikings. They're then able to go out and they do battle and defeat Rollo and his men decisively. So they actually go out and break the siege. Thanks to this miraculous intervention by the Blessed Virgin. As the tide turns, Rollo sees that he can't win and flees for his life. He's thought to have lost more than 6,800 men that day. It's a disaster for the Vikings. But the battle's not over yet. A group of pagans have escaped the massacre and managed to take refuge north of the city at the top of a hill. The part of Rollo's army goes up this hill of Liv and is surrounded by Frankish forces who seem overwhelmingly powerful. The Vikings don't think there's any way to stop them. At this point, they're the ones who are cornered. Well, they're trapped. They are surrounded by the enemy. No escape seems possible. Once again, they will use cunning and take a wild risk. During the night, one of them must sneak through the Frankish camp. And when he gets to the other side, blow the bugle to make it seem like Rollo has returned. And that allegedly worked to the effect that the Franks did get scared and also left, which meant that in the meantime, the Viking group, which had been retreating on the hill, had the possibility to escape and find Rollo again. While some of Rollo's army survives, he is still the big loser of the Battle of Chartres. However, a few weeks later, he will be solemnly enthroned as the official master of a new territory, Normandy. The fact is that the Battle of Chartres, after two long centuries of conflict between the Vikings and the Franks, has left both sides exhausted. The Vikings are exhausted by so many years of pillaging and fighting. The Franks are exhausted by so many years of fierce resistance. Everyone longs for peace. For the first time, what once seemed unthinkable is coming to pass. Franks and Vikings will join forces and from this political marriage, Normandy will be born. Charles the Simple, the new king of the Franks, accompanied by Archbishop Franco of Rouen, offers Rollo a deal. He says, you can settle here, you can have Rouen, you can have the coastline of Normandy in exchange for defending it against other Viking incursions. Charles, he's not a war leader, he's not an effective leader. He knows that he is on the verge of losing his throne because of his ineffectiveness against the Vikings. This is a kind of arrangement which is setting a thief to catch a thief. It's been done previously and often is actually quite successful because the Vikings are themselves the experts in naval warfare, in this kind of smash and grab raiding. So who better to protect your coastline from Vikings than Vikings? Rollo, he's getting older. He's probably in his 50s and he's been out Viking for a long time and he wants to settle down. He's in deep contact with Normandy. He no longer wants to be a wandering fighter. He wants to settle down and enjoy the benefits of his wealth and prestige and this is exactly what's offered him. If he accepts the deal, Rollo will become the official ruler of all the lands in the dioceses of Rouen, Evreux and Lisieux. Rollo's aware that this proposal concerns both himself and his companions so he convenes the council of Viking chiefs. They all want peace. The Vikings tell Rollo, listen, if we're given the land in which we have been living for 20 years, which is rich, fertile land with lots of forests, wild animals that we can kill, fish in all the rivers and an opening to the sea, this land is paradise to us. So we have to accept it. Rollo really thought that he had become someone powerful enough and threatening enough to be officially recognized. Not just being given payments in money but actually being given territory and title by the Frankish king. That's a major achievement. Rollo decides to accept the deal. It seems the die is cast. Autumn 911 in Neustria in the little village of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. On the banks of the river Epte, an unlikely encounter is arranged between the Frankish king, Charles the Simple and Rollo, the leader of the Vikings. Everyone's sword is at the ready. Well, it's quite common for armies in the Middle Ages to meet at rivers or foreign powers to do so because they can be on either side which makes it secure if they don't trust each other fully. It acknowledges often an implicit degree of equality between the sides. The two leaders will conclude a historic treaty. But Rollo suddenly comes up with a dramatic twist. He wants more land. In addition to the territories already proposed by the king, Rollo demands all the territory from Epte to the coast. Turf that had not yet been devastated by the Vikings. Initially, Charles is not very pleased with this. He initially tries to buy Rollo off. He says, why don't you have Flanders instead, for example, or Brittany? But Rollo says no Epte to the sea or nothing at all and eventually Charles caves in. By reaching out to the open hands of the king, Rollo, king of the pirates, takes the official title of Count of Rouen. This is Normandy's birth certificate. The land of the Northmen is born. But how will the Vikings be able to rule over a Frankish duchy? In Europe, the Vikings have founded many principalities. But only Normandy will manage to endure for no less than three centuries. The key is Rollo's willingness to adapt to his new land. A lifelong pagan, he agrees to abandon his own religion and be baptized. He even receives a new Christian name, Robert. If he wants to keep his lands permanently and be obeyed by his Christian subjects, he must convert to the Christian faith and become a Frank like all Franks. Otherwise, he'll be rejected one day and the king of France will come to take back his land. Rollo has the intelligence to understand that this is indeed the solution if he wants to stay in Normandy. The way that you proclaim loyalties in the Frankish world is through oaths. And oaths are by their very nature Christian. So if you can't swear a Christian oath because you're not a Christian, then how can you be trusted to keep a pact? How can you be trusted to be loyal? Rollo demands that all his men be baptized as well. Their conversion may not be sincere, but it is politically astute. The key point here is that you're settling these men on your land. You're integrating them into your political structures. You need them to be at least culturally vaguely aligned with you and you're hoping that this brings them into the fold because one of the problems with Vikings is that they're playing by different social and religious rules. Between 2,000 and 3,000 Vikings are said to have settled in Normandy, a small figure compared to the indigenous population of 350,000. This occupation of the land by Rollo and his men is more an integration than a colonization. Language, customs, traditions. The Vikings abandoned their identity. It's the price they pay to run the territory in peace. Rollo knows this better than anyone. He was arriving there as someone who already knew the place very well. He already also knew the Frankish aristocracy. He had met them on the battlefield many times and he also knew how they worked, what was the mechanisms of being part of the Frankish elite. The Vikings are also quick to marry Frankish women. Intermarriage helped a lot because it blends the populations and Vikings were always very pragmatic and so they tended to adopt customs that they thought were effective and kind of just release their own customs that were not quite as effective and so relatively quickly they become absorbed into the local population through this. In just a few years, Normandy under Rollo will know exceptional development and will find peace and security. There'll be no more Viking expeditions up the Seine. Rollo becomes an almost mythic figure. One legend tells of how he hung gold rings from a tree in a forest for three years, confident that no one would dare steal them. Until his death in around 932, he further expands his territories, granted new lands from a grateful Frankish king. His conquests paved the way for a long line of dukes to inherit the duchy. One after the other, his descendants would devote themselves to transforming Normandy into one of the most prosperous and dynamic principalities in the whole kingdom. But even that couldn't compare with the feat his great-great-great-grandson, William the Conqueror, would accomplish a century and a half later. To make the duchy a leading player on the international scene.