First Across the Atlantic : 105 



on Paris. By a spirited defense Count Odo saved Paris but had to 

 concede to Hrolf, also called Rollo, possession of Normandy. Rollo 

 was christened as Robert and under him colonization and occupation 

 began. Within a century Normandy, though independent, had adopted 

 the French language and the French legal system. 



Not only Paris but also Hamburg, Utrecht, Nantes, Bordeaux, 

 Seville and other cities were the subjects of Norman attacks. By 843 

 they were appearing in the Mediterranean whose islands were then 

 in the hands of the Saracens and other Islamic people. It was the 

 Norman Harald Hardrada and his Scandinavian crews in Byzantine 

 ships who beat the Saracen pirates off the coast of Anatolia and then 

 attacked the Islamic ports all along the North African shore. In 

 1038-1040 with further Byzantine help he beat the Saracens of Sicily 

 in two decisive battles. Twenty-six years later this same Hardrada 

 turned up in Northumbria to aid Tostiq in an attack on Harold, the 

 newly selected king of England. Rushing north Harold defeated 

 Hardrada at Stamford Bridge; rushing south again he found that 

 William and his Norman French had already landed on the Channel 

 and his exhausted troops lost the battle of Hastings (1066). 



In the Mediterranean the Normans insinuated themselves between 

 two powerful factions of the Christian Church — the Roman and the 

 Byzantine — and in fact played a part in developing open hostility be- 

 tween them. Having accepted Byzantine support in the attack on the 

 Saracens of Sicily, they shifted ground and then accepted papal sup- 

 port in attacks on Saracens in Italy. With support from the papacy 

 they also took parts of southern Italy from Byzantium. In 1060 they 

 took Reggio, completing the conquest of Calabria. After they took 

 Otranto in 1068 and Bari in 1071 the Byzantine rule in Italy had come 

 to an end. 



Then the Normans themselves proved hard to dislodge. Between 

 1081 and 1085 Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund tried to estab- 

 lish a Norman empire in the Balkans. They won the battle of Phar- 

 salus and took Durazzo, they conquered a large part of Macedonia 

 but were turned back at Larissa. It took the combined Venetian and 

 Byzantine fleets to defeat them near Corfu. Even so the Balkan proj- 

 ect was not abandoned until Guiscard died and his sons fell to quar- 

 reling. Bohemund and his successors played an important and not 

 unprofitable part in the Crusades. 



The Viking ship was not a sudden new development and there is 

 no uncertainty about its characteristics and its structure. A number 

 of examples of the Viking ship have been discovered and carefully 



