THE SUNDAY SNAP

An image of Norman rule in Sicily and a quick note on the next couple of weeks on History, Etc

The Stormin’ Normans are having a bit of a historical renaissance at the moment. In this week’s Sunday Times I reviewed an excellent new book by Judith Green, which explains how this hybrid people - half Frank, half Viking - came to dominate Western Europe and the Mediterranean world during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Here’s one of my favourite Norman images, a mosaic in the Palermo church known as La Mortarana, showing the Norman-descended King Roger II of Sicily being crowned by Christ.

You can read my review of Green’s book here, if you’re a Sunday Times subscriber. If not, here’s a quick taster:

[The Normans] were violent roughnecks, tough negotiators and no respecters of established authority. They also got around. Between the early 10th and the early 12th centuries, [they] conquered England and Sicily and invaded southern Italy, terrorising Popes, tussling with Byzantine emperors, and hustling into the Reconquista wars against the Muslims of Iberia. They also played a prominent role in the First Crusade to Jerusalem, when a Norman principality was established around Antioch in northern Syria. How and why this particular tribe of Viking pigs-in-lipstick made it so far in the world has puzzled historians for generations. Were they an exceptional race? Or lucky? Or both?

Good question, right…

Green’s central argument is that around the turn of the first millennium, Europe was a wild west: a place where unstable polities allowed charismatic, opportunistic leaders to flourish. And the Normans had plenty of those.

I’m travelling a lot at the moment, which is why there was a brief pause on the podcast last week. The flipside is that there’ll be plenty of great content from my travels here on History, Etc - from Morocco this week and the Plantagenet castles of northern France next week.

The best stuff, as always, will be for subscribers - if you’ve not yet signed up, please hit the button and join the fun.

See you around the way.

Dan