WELCOME TO NORMANDY - 1 -

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I – The Normandy of our ancestors

1 – Normandy before the Duchy...

Do you know, dear visitors from Great Britain, that we have known each other more than two millenia ? We have in reality the same origins and come from the same Nordick stock.

Photo Gérard Roger

Our story begins even before the arrival on your island of the Angles and Saxons. Thus more than thousand years the inhabitants of what would become England, the Bretons, traded with “those opposite”, the future Neustriens, who established themselves in the region that would become Normandy.

They bought in from Cornwall to make bronze spots, ustensils, weapons...

The arrival of the Angles and Saxons simpled changed the individuals but not the commercial flow...

These “commercial relationships” continued to the time of the Gauls. The different tribes peopling the future Normandy, the “Calettes” (who gave their name to the “Pays de Caux”), the Aulerques, Eburosices, Lexoviens, the Veliocrasses, the Viducasses and other Bajocasses, Esuviens and Unelles kept these contacts whilst not being able to work with you to hold back the invading Romans, whose presence, and the positive side, improved the organisation of the territory of Gaul. Il would be more difficult for them to apply the same security to you ! Nevertheless this civilisation has left traces on both sides of the Channel, more important, however, on this side with the administrative system, the developpment of transport links (Roman roads) and the creation of large, essentielly agricultural, centres ( villae).

From the 3nd century, the Roman Empire suffered the shock of repeated invasions.

On the Channel, commercial ships appeared with small groups wanting to establish themselves on our shores : these were the Frisians and Saxons.

In England, but also in the region of Bayeux in Neustrie and in the Gaul, invaders came in successive waves. The Francs imposed their political system, in fact that meant conserving the gallo-roman system, they installed courageous leaders as heads of the “villae”. After three centuries of rule the royal family of the merovingian grew weaker and gave way to a new family from “Maires du Palais”, the Carolingians.

They undertook the construction of a veritable empire stetching from the Atlantix coasts to the Elbe in the east and from Denmark in the north to the borders of Spain in the south, stopping completely the advance of the Arabs. 

Curiously, the Emperor Charlemagne did not interest himself with England, preferring above all to consolidate his “continental empire”. In spite of this he caused concern with his successive pushes worrying the neighbourgs to the north, the Scandinavians. Many of them knew the Carolingian Empire throught various exchanges and business. They could see the strenghts but also the weakness. The Empire had a redoubtable army but for intérior peace the administration had “demilitarised”. The society composed three groups : the clergy, the nobility and the peasants. The region is scattered with towns and villages where one finds many monasteries, veritable economic centres of the period.

5 juin 793 ! A bolt from the blue !