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hodekin View Drop Down
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Posts: 11 		  Quote hodekin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: The Norman invasion
    Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 21:08
I entirely take your point, but the King of 'Anjou' or King of 'Aquitaine' does not quite have the ring of King of 'England'LOL , and as you say, it was the Taxation of the English people that financed Richards continuous overseas adventures.
 
I still feel however, that without the consequences of '1066' even Richard would not be the household name that we hear of today, never mind having his statue outside the houses of Parliament! Wink
 
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Posts: 1409 		  Quote Parnell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 23:45
Originally posted by hodekin

I entirely take your point, but the King of 'Anjou' or King of 'Aquitaine' does not quite have the ring of King of 'England'LOL , and as you say, it was the Taxation of the English people that financed Richards continuous overseas adventures.
 
I still feel however, that without the consequences of '1066' even Richard would not be the household name that we hear of today, never mind having his statue outside the houses of Parliament! Wink
 
hodekin


Richard treated your country like a cash cow... Sort of like one of our modern millionaires who are 'silent partners' in various different companies, and who like to take the profit of those companies but do little of the work.

His brother John, though utterly incapable, at least put England first! Though the mess he made of the French posessions... well... A story for a different day perhaps.
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Posts: 11 		  Quote hodekin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 04:04

I couldn’t agree with you more!

 

History hails Richard as the great legendary warrior King of England whilst his brother John is the skulking stay at home ne're do well!

 

But Richard cared little for England other than what he could ring out of it, and spent very little time in the country that paid for his overseas extravaganzas. As for John, well at least he stayed in England, but his defence of French possessions (as you suggest) was woefully short of the mark.

 

But the fact that (the cash cow) of England was there at the disposal of the likes of Richard in the first place is I believe a direct consequence of the Norman victory of 1066! Had England stayed in the hands of a Saxon line of monarchs or even Danish or Norwegian, do you think that this seemingly never ending supply of funding would have found it’s way along the long road to the Holy land?

 

An independent Saxon England or even one with strong Scandinavia ties would in my opinion have cast its gaze (and its money) more to the North and North East rather than the South and the Middle East.

 

I believe that England’s involvement in the Crusades (financially or otherwise) would not have been what it was but for the events of 1066.

 

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Posts: 11 		  Quote hodekin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 06:21
Originally posted by Wulfstan

Hodekin:
 
What is less well known is the involvement of the English in the Byzantine Varangian Guard after the Battle of Hastings. Indeed, there was a large exodus of English to the Eastern Roman Empire at this time, and probable English settlements on the Black Sea coast.
 
Yes! the way I've heard it is that around the year 1080 a fleet of nearly 300 ships consisting mainly of Saxons and some Danes sailed for Byzantium to take service with the Guard. I should imagine that 'if' this happened, then the settlement in the Crimea would have been those families who were not part and parcel of the Serving Varangs!
 
Would William have allowed this to happen? perhaps it would have been a good opportunity to get rid of potential malcontents?
 
This is a very shadowy episode and I'm not at all sure that it can be verified as such, but it is worthy of further research.....can anyone else help with this?
 
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Posts: 29 		  Quote Wulfstan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 20:08
Hodekin:
 
The best summary about this subject can be found in Byzantine Studies I. Another  New England? Anglo-Saxon Settlement on the Black Sea by J. Shepard.
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Posts: 11 		  Quote hodekin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Jun-2009 at 06:07
Thanks Wulfstan,
 
I'll check that out!Thumbs Up
 
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Posts: 1943 		  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Jun-2009 at 11:53
Originally posted by hodekin

But the fact that (the cash cow) of England was there at the disposal of the likes of Richard in the first place is I believe a direct consequence of the Norman victory of 1066! Had England stayed in the hands of a Saxon line of monarchs or even Danish or Norwegian, do you think that this seemingly never ending supply of funding would have found it’s way along the long road to the Holy land?


It is a direct or at least indirect consequence as the Angevins inherited England through the Normans, but it would take more than a Saxon victory at Hastings to reverse the trends of the time. Money would still have flown to the crusading movement, except the crusaders would have been from Denmark and Norway instead of Anjou and Aquitaine. Possibly the total amount would be less, as Scandinavia wasn't as heavily involved with the crusades as the Frankish lands.


Originally posted by hodekin

An independent Saxon England or even one with strong Scandinavia ties would in my opinion have cast its gaze (and its money) more to the North and North East rather than the South and the Middle East.


There would have been a greater involvement with the Scandinavian kingdoms, naturally, and as a consequence English crusading might have followed more along the lines of Scandinavian crusading and focused on the Baltic in addition to the Holy Land. The pull of the crusades and Byzantium would be unavoidable however, as the Scandinavian kingdoms too took part in the former and had a long tradition of involvement with the latter.
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Posts: 11 		  Quote hodekin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Jun-2009 at 16:48
Originally posted by Reginmund

Money would still have flown to the crusading movement, except the crusaders would have been from Denmark and Norway instead of Anjou and Aquitaine. Possibly the total amount would be less, as Scandinavia wasn't as heavily involved with the crusades as the Frankish lands.

 
All things are of course possible, and perhaps by the 3rd Crusade (once Jerusalem had been lost) this may have been the case to a limited extent. But without the 'steering hand' of the  Norman/French drive for more land, I doubt money and men would have 'flown' to the Crusading movement in quite the way you suggest!
 

Originally posted by Reginmund

The pull of the crusades and Byzantium would be unavoidable however, as the Scandinavian kingdoms too took part in the former and had a long tradition of involvement with the latter.

 
Again, it is possible, but I'm not so sure. For example, the Rus too played a major part in the history of Byzantium but how big a part did they play in the Crusades to recover Jerusalem? I believe that a Saxon or Norwegian victory in 1066 would have drastically altered Englands overseas involvements in later years.
 
 
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Posts: 132 		  Quote Jallaludin Akbar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Jun-2009 at 20:53
Hello,

In my opinion, the greatest consequence of the Norman invasion would be language. In pre-1066 England, there were a group of dialects spoken that were known as 'Anglo-Saxon'. As William the Conquerer took over England, he brought with him the French language. For the next 3 centuries, French would be the dominant language spoken in the court, higher culture, as well as royalty. French trickled down to the population and has greatly affected the English that we speak today. In fact, it affected it so much, that I heard pre-1066 'Old English' sounds similar to modern day Icelandic.  
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Posts: 1943 		  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Jun-2009 at 15:51
Originally posted by Jallaludin Akbar

Hello,

In my opinion, the greatest consequence of the Norman invasion would be language. In pre-1066 England, there were a group of dialects spoken that were known as 'Anglo-Saxon'. As William the Conquerer took over England, he brought with him the French language. For the next 3 centuries, French would be the dominant language spoken in the court, higher culture, as well as royalty. French trickled down to the population and has greatly affected the English that we speak today. In fact, it affected it so much, that I heard pre-1066 'Old English' sounds similar to modern day Icelandic.  


Hi.

Cultural influences from France, including language, entered more or less all European languages, regardless of whether they were ruled by French-speakers or not. However, the extent of French influence on English would no doubt be less had it not been for the Norman conquest.

English and Icelandic share a common root in the Germanic language family, so naturally the further back you go the more similar the languages become. Some linguists believe Old English and Old Norse were mutually intelligible, some disagree, but it can't be denied they were a lot more similar than now. Icelandic is a special case however, as Iceland's isolation has led to exceptionally little change in the language, so that it remains largely the same today as 1000 years ago, which is why modern Icelandic sounds similar to Old English. If you look at Scandinavia however, from where the Old Norse-speaking Icelanders came, the languages have changed so much that Old Norse is as alien to modern Scandinavians as Old English is to the modern English, with many French and German loan-words, but the Scandinavians were never ruled by a foreign language elite.

I'm not trying to disagree or undermine your statement here, I'm just elaborating it further to shed light on the complexities involved.


Edited by Reginmund - 06-Jun-2009 at 15:54
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Posts: 11 		  Quote hodekin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Jun-2009 at 06:26
Well there you go Jallaludin,
 
Thanks to Reginmunds most erudite reply you have a perfect breakdown of the common roots of English within the Germanic family of languages.
 
Getting back to your post however regarding the greatest consequence of the Norman Invasion, I do not share your opinion that it was 'language'. As you pointed out, the Latin French that was brought over with the Normans was largely used by the ruling classes, the vast majority of the common people however remained with their 'Saxon/English' tongue.
 
As has been pointed out, there were of course several loan words from the French that became prominent in everyday speech for the common people, Mutton and Beef spring to mind. But other than that, I do not believe that the usage of the French language by the ruling classes drastically influenced everyday spoken English to any major degree.
 
On the question of similarities, of all the Germanic tongues I rather fancy that Dutch is perhaps the closest to English!
 
Just my opinion thoughWink
 
 
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Posts: 1943 		  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Jun-2009 at 13:00
The French influence on English follows a trend. The words adopted are mostly big, hoity doity ones like "royalty", "honour", "splendour" and so forth, whereas the common everyday words were and still are of Anglo-Saxon origin, such as "man", "house" and most prepositions and personal pronouns.

If anyone is curious what the older forms of English might have sounded like:

The opening of Beowulf poem read in Old English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L7VTH8ii_8

Gawain and the Green Knight read in Middle English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrnXgVTTrCI (skip to 3:20 to go straight to the reading)

The linguist who posted the last vid also has videoes on Old Norse, Gothic, Old Swedish, older forms of German and so forth, for comparison. He also has videos on modern Icelandic, and it's plain to see how similar it is to both Old Norse and Old English.


Edited by Reginmund - 07-Jun-2009 at 13:03
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Posts: 7035 		  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Jun-2009 at 13:15
There's more to language comparison than words. The syntactical structures of English are heavily influenced by French.
 
At its very simplest consider the formation of the plural in English: virtually identical to the French. Or consider the time-place sequence: German 'Er war gestern hier' as against French 'Il était ici hier' and English 'He was here yesterday'.
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Posts: 11 		  Quote hodekin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Jun-2009 at 18:03
LOLLOL!
 
This debate is very interesting! on a side note however, it is beginning to remind me of the sketch in Monty Pythons 'Life of Brian' you know....'what have the Romans ever done for us'!LOL
 
This time it's 'What have the Normans ever done for us'!Big smile
 
All things said thus far a true and the development of modern English must of course owe an amount to the French influence first brought to England by the Normans. I still believe however that the main consequenses of the Norman invasion was not the influence over the language but the direction it pointed England into future history.
 
But as I've said before, this is only my opinion.
 
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Posts: 1943 		  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Jun-2009 at 20:25
Both cases could easily be argued. Geek
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Posts: 171 		  Quote Chookie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Jun-2009 at 21:43
Originally posted by hodekin

On the question of similarities, of all the Germanic tongues I rather fancy that Dutch is perhaps the closest to English!

Sorry, it isn't. The closest according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is Scots. Which developed from a distinct form of Middle English and was influenced by languages other than Norman-French (Gaelic, Norse and French among them).

<side note> The Norse (Viking) presence in Scotland, Ireland and Wales was basically Norwegian and/or Icelandic, in contrast to England where most Vikings were Danish.
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Posts: 7035 		  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jun-2009 at 11:28
Originally posted by gcle2003

There's more to language comparison than words. The syntactical structures of English are heavily influenced by French.
 
At its very simplest consider the formation of the plural in English: virtually identical to the French. Or consider the time-place sequence: German 'Er war gestern hier' as against French 'Il était ici hier' and English 'He was here yesterday'.
 
Funnily I didn't notice the odd coincidence in that comparison. German 'hier' means English 'here' whereas French 'hier' means English 'yesterday'.
 
I hope that didn't confuse anyone.
 
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Posts: 11 		  Quote hodekin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jun-2009 at 13:08
Originally posted by Reginmund

Both cases could easily be argued. Geek
 
As in fact what we are doingSleepy
 
 
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Posts: 11 		  Quote hodekin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jun-2009 at 13:13
Originally posted by Chookie

Sorry, it isn't. The closest according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is Scots. Which developed from a distinct form of Middle English and was influenced by languages other than Norman-French (Gaelic, Norse and French among them).
 
Well, I did say 'fancy' and I did say 'perhaps' but thanks for the info ChookieWink
 
If 'Scots' is developed from 'Middle English', how does that go down North of the border?Smile
 
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Posts: 7035 		  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jun-2009 at 19:12
Calling Scots a different language from English is like calling Lëtzebuergesch a different language from German. Which of course I do all the time because of my neighbours Smile
 
Lëtzebuergesch is just as influenced by French as Scots is by Gaelic, and it's remarkably similar to middle Franconian dialects, just as Scots is remarkably similar to English dialects along the borders.
 
I just wish people would call Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon and reserve 'English' of any period for the language that resulted mostly from the merger of Anglo-Saxon with French. But I recognise it's one of my lost causes.
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