Rollo
Rollo, also known with his epithet, Rollo "the Walker", was a Viking who, as Count of Rouen, became the first ruler of Normandy, a region in today's northern France. He was prominent among the Vikings who besieged Paris in 885–886, and he emerged as a war leader among the Norsemen who had secured a permanent foothold on Frankish soil in the valley of the lower Seine after the Siege of Chartres in 911. Charles the Simple, king of West Francia, agreed to the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, which granted Rollo lands between the river Epte and the sea in exchange for Rollo agreeing to end his brigandage, swear allegiance to Charles, convert to Christianity, and pledge to defend the Seine estuary from other Viking raiders.
Rollo's life was recorded by Dudo of St. Quentin. Historians such as W. Vogel, Alexander Bugge, and Henri Prentout have debated whether Dudo's account is historically accurate, and Rollo's origin and life are heavily disputed.
Rollo is first recorded in a charter of 918 as the leader of a group of Viking settlers, and he reigned over the region of Normandy until at least 928. He was succeeded as ruler of the new Duchy of Normandy by his son William Longsword. The offspring of Rollo and his followers, through their intermingling with the local Frankish and Gallo-Roman population, became known as the "Normans". After the Norman conquest of England and of southern Italy and Sicily over the following two centuries, their descendants came to rule England, much of Ireland, Sicily and Antioch from the 11th to 13th centuries, leaving behind an enduring legacy in the histories of Europe and the Near East.
Name
The Heimskringla records that Rolf the Ganger went to Normandy and ruled it, so Rollo is generally presumed to be a Latinisation of the Old Norse name Hrólfr, a theory that is supported by the rendition of Hrólfr as Roluo in the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus. It is also sometimes suggested that Rollo may be a Latinised version of another Norse name, Hrollaugr.The 10th-century French historian Dudo in his Historia Normannorum records that Rollo took the baptismal name Robert. A variant spelling, Rou, is used in the 12th-century Norman French verse chronicle Roman de Rou, which was compiled by Wace and commissioned by King Henry II of England, a descendant of Rollo.
Origins and historiography
Rollo was born in the mid-9th century, as his tomb states he was in his eighties when he died in 933; he was almost certainly born in Scandinavia, either in Denmark or Norway. In part, this uncertainty may result from the unspecific contemporary usage of terms such as "Vikings", "Northmen", "Norse", "Swedes", "Danes", and "Norwegians".The earliest well-attested historical event associated with Rollo is his part in leading the Vikings who besieged Paris in 885–886 but were fended off by Odo of France.
Sources do not make clear the year of Rollo's birth, but from his activity, marriage, children, and death, the mid-9th century may be inferred.
Among biographical remarks about Rollo written by the cleric Dudo of Saint-Quentin in the late 10th century, he claimed that Rollo "the Dane" was from Dacia, and had moved from there to the island of Scandza. Dacia originally referred to the region near the Black Sea, but Dudo identified it with Denmark by making a false etymology between Daci and Dani. One of Rollo's great-grandsons and a contemporary of Dudo was known as Robert the Dane. However, Dudo's Historia Normannorum was commissioned by Rollo's grandson, Richard I of Normandy and while Dudo likely had access to family members and/or other people with a living memory of Rollo, this fact must be weighed against the text's potential biases, as an official biography.
According to Dudo, an unnamed king of Denmark was antagonistic to Rollo's family, including his father – an unnamed Danish nobleman – and Rollo's brother Gurim. Following the death of their father, Gurim was killed and Rollo was forced to leave Denmark. Dudo appears to have been the main source for William of Jumièges and Orderic Vitalis, although both include additional details.
A Norwegian background for Rollo was first explicitly claimed by Goffredo Malaterra, an 11th-century Benedictine monk and historian, who wrote: "Rollo sailed boldly from Norway with his fleet to the Christian coast." Likewise, the 12th-century English historian William of Malmesbury stated that Rollo was "born of noble lineage among the Norwegians".
A chronicler named Benoît wrote in the mid-12th-century Chronique des ducs de Normandie that Rollo had been born in a town named "Fasge". This has since been variously interpreted as referring to Faxe in Sjælland, Fauske in Sykkylven, or perhaps a more obscure settlement that has since been abandoned or renamed. Benoît also repeated the claim that Rollo had been persecuted by a local ruler and had fled from there to "Scanza island", by which Benoît probably means Scania. Benoît says elsewhere in the Chronique that Rollo is Danish.
Snorri Sturluson identified Rollo with Hrólfr the Walker from the 13th-century Icelandic sagas, Heimskringla and Orkneyinga Saga. Hrólf the Walker was so named because he "was so big that no horse could carry him". The Icelandic sources claim that Hrólfr was from Møre in western Norway, in the late 9th century and that his parents were the Norwegian jarl Rognvald Eysteinsson and a noblewoman from Møre named Hildr Hrólfsdóttir. However, these claims were made three centuries after the history commissioned by Rollo's own grandson.
There may be circumstantial evidence for kinship between Rollo and his historical contemporary Ketill Flatnose, King of the Isles – a Norse realm centred on the Western Isles of Scotland. Both Irish and Icelandic sources suggest that Rollo, as a young man, visited or lived in northern Scotland, where he had a daughter named Cadlinar. Icelandic sources name Ketill Flatnose's father as Björn Grímsson, which would imply that the name of Ketill Flatnose's paternal grandfather was Grim. That would be limited, onomastic evidence for a connection to Rollo, whose father was named Ketill, while Rollo also had a brother named Gurim – a name likely cognate with Grim. In addition, Icelandic sources report that Rollo's ancestral home was Møre, where Ketill Flatnose's ancestors were also said to have originated. However, there
are no surviving sources explicitly claiming a connection; Ketill was a common name in Norse societies, as were names like Gurim/Grim.
Biography
Dudo's chronicle about Rollo seizing Rouen in 876 is supported by the contemporary chronicler Flodoard, who records that Robert of the Breton March waged a campaign against the Vikings, nearly levelling Rouen and other settlements. Eventually, he conceded "certain coastal provinces" to them. Although, scholars have debated this and have said that Rollo did not even arrive in West Francia until after the year 876, making this timeline given in Dudo wrong.According to Dudo, Rollo struck up a friendship in England with a king called “Alstem”. This has puzzled many historians, but recently this person has been identified as Guthrum, the Danish leader whom Alfred the Great baptised with the name “Athelstan”, and was recognised as King of the East Angles in 880.
Dudo recorded that when Rollo controlled Bayeux by force, he carried off the beautiful Popa or Poppa, a daughter of Berenger, Count of Rennes. He married her, and she bore his son and heir, William Longsword. Her parentage is uncertain, and may have been invented after the fact to legitimize her son's lineage, as many of the fantastic genealogical claims made by Dudo were. She may have come from any country with which the Norse had contact, as Dudo is a highly unreliable source who may have written his chronicle primarily as a didactic tool to teach courtly values.
There are few contemporary mentions of Rollo. In 911, Robert I of France, brother of Odo, again defeated another band of Viking warriors in Chartres with his well-trained horsemen. This victory paved the way for Rollo's baptism and settlement in Normandy. In return for formal recognition of the lands he possessed, Rollo agreed to be baptised and assisted the king in defending the realm. As was custom, Rollo took the baptismal name “Robert”, after his godfather, Robert I.
The seal of the agreement was to be a marriage between Rollo and Gisela, daughter of Charles, possibly her legitimate father. Since Charles first married in 907, that would mean that Gisela was at most 5 years old at the time of the treaty of 911 which offered her in marriage. It has therefore been speculated that she could have been an illegitimate daughter. However, a diplomatic child betrothal need not be doubted.
The earliest record of Rollo is from 918, in a charter of Charles III to an abbey, which referred to an earlier grant to "the Normans of the Seine", namely "Rollo and his associates" for "the protection of the kingdom". Dudo retrospectively stated that this pact took place in 911 at Saint-Clair-sur-Epte.
Dudo narrates a humorous story not found in other primary sources about Rollo's pledge of fealty to Charles III as part of the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. The attendant bishops urged Rollo to kiss the king's foot to prove his allegiance. Rollo refused, saying "I will never bow my knees at the knees of any man, and no man's foot will I kiss." Instead, Rollo commanded one of his warriors to kiss the king's foot. The warrior complied by raising the king's foot to his mouth as the king was standing, which "caused the king to topple backward" much to the amusement of their entourage. On taking his oath of fealty, Rollo divided the lands between the rivers Epte and Risle among his chieftains and settled in the de facto capital of Rouen.
Given Rouen and its hinterland in return for the alliance with the Franks, it was agreed upon that it was in the interests of both Rollo himself and his Frankish allies to extend his authority over Viking settlers. This would appear to be the motive for later concessions to the Vikings of the Seine, which are mentioned in other records of the time. When Charles III was being deposed by Rudolph of France he appealed to Rollo and, another one of his Norman allies. With their combined army they marched to his aid in fulfilment of their pledge to the Carolingians, but were stopped at the Oise River by Charles' opponents who traded their cooperation for more territorial concessions. The need for an agreement was particularly urgent when Robert I, successor of Charles III, was killed in 923.
Rudolph was recorded as sponsoring a new agreement by which a group of Norsemen conceded the provinces of the Bessin and Maine. These settlers were presumed to be Rollo and his associates, moving their authority westward from the Seine valley. It is still unclear as to whether Rollo was being given lordship over the Vikings already settled in the region to domesticate and restrain them, or the Franks around Bayeux to protect them from other Viking leaders settled in eastern Brittany and the Cotentin peninsula.
Rollo died sometime between a final mention of him by Flodoard in 928, and 933 – the year in which a third grant of land, usually identified as being the Cotentin and Avranchin areas, was given to his son and successor William.