Rollo

Biography

Rollo — called 'Gangrolf' (Going-Rolf) in the Norse sagas because he was reportedly too large for any horse to carry — was the Norse chieftain who received Normandy from the Frankish king Charles the Simple in 911, converted to Christianity, and became the ancestor of William the Conqueror and (through William's descendants) most of the royal families of Europe. He was either Norwegian or Danish depending on which source you believe — the question has been contested between Norway and Denmark for centuries and remains unresolved. Before Normandy, Rollo was a professional Viking in the classic mold: he raided Scotland and England, wintered in the Danelaw, and led or participated in at least one of the great Seine campaigns against Francia. He likely appears in the Norse sagas' accounts of the 885-886 Siege of Paris, though this identification is uncertain. By the first decade of the tenth century, he commanded a powerful force in the lower Seine valley — powerful enough that Charles the Simple chose to negotiate rather than fight. The Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte (911) gave Rollo and his followers the lower Seine lands as a fief in exchange for conversion to Christianity, intermarriage with Frankish women, and the defense of the Seine against other Norse raiders. It was an extraordinary bargain: the Franks neutralized a dangerous enemy by making him responsible for preventing more enemies from following the same route. Rollo's successors Latinized their Norse names, spoke French, adopted Frankish institutions, and became the most militarily formidable ruling class in Europe — the Normans who conquered England, Sicily, and the Holy Land.

Key Battles