Here’s a question. If the Normans, with whom it is has been claimed all our troubles began, were playing Transnistria, or some other faraway land, should we be up for the Normans? Well no, of course not! But hold on … maybe we should. After all, there are Norman surnames all around us. Aengus Ó Snodaigh’s mother, the distinguished artist Cliodhna Cussen, had one. My own name could be Norman. The person beside you on the bus might be one of them.
Maybe we should avoid stirring things and just say: ‘Well, even if the Normans did some bad things, sure we’re all Irish, aren’t we? Why not apply a statute of limitations and back the lads with the rampant lions on their crests?’ This commendable-sounding inclusivity might appeal to south Dublin readers of The Irish Times (and, of course, people with Norman-sounding names), but not to everyone, and probably not to most people. As we know, there are many among us for whom it is comforting and pleasant to have someone to stick it to. Why not the Normans?
So here’s another question: assuming we choose not to be high-minded about the whole business, are there any actual Normans out there who could be ‘talked to’ regarding their forebears’ crimes? Is there the possibility of a historic justice commission with retribution, or even repatriation, on the menu? Sadly (at least for some) that’s a big fat no. The whole televised show trial dream is a non-runner. You’d have a better chance of finding a producer for a revival of Toy Show – the Musical. Many centuries of multiple male and female lines mean that everyone has something in the cupboard. If people were to be targeted on the basis of connection with a Norman surname, there would be huge problems. No one would be safe.
What about DNA? Would that help? Sadly, there is no genetically pure community of Normans anywhere in the country that could be brought to Dublin on special trains and hauled over the coals, and that includes the famous baronies of Forth and Bargy. There just isn’t much Norman DNA anywhere in the country.
And here, this is the really interesting bit. The fact of the matter is that very few Normans came to Ireland. What? Yes, it’s true and supported by the historical record. Actually, it was pretty much the same in England. At its most ambitious the objective of those who came in 1169-70, as with those who invaded England, was to dominate, not replace, the locals. But strangely, this simple truth and its implications are widely ignored.
Recently, a highly respected Irish Times columnist declared: ‘A sizeable proportion of the population is descended from the Normans.’ If this is true, it must mean that the tiny number of Normans who came here with their new ways and fancy chain mail were found to be exceptionally charming or, if that seems unlikely, they must have engaged in mass rape over an extended period. And if that is true it might make Irish participation in the proposed celebration of the Norman influence in Europe tricky, and also, by the by, vindicate the reservations of Aengus Ó Snodaigh on the matter. But happily, for the organisers of the ‘2027 The Year of the Normans – People of Europe’ jamboree, the Normans were not mass rapists. Many did intermarry with locals, and, as an aside, it is worth noting that the distinctive DNA of this small number of Norman individuals, in so far as it existed, has long since disappeared into the ether.
Norman genetic signatures have no substantial or even minority presence in contemporary Irish DNA, which is overwhelmingly Bronze Age and prehistoric in origin, as is the case across most of western Europe. For a number of reasons, a Norman DNA signature is not easy to identify definitively. However, the indications are that it is minuscule, as is the case in England. Indeed, it would seem to be the case – fun fact coming up – that there are more identifiable Neanderthal genes in contemporary Irish genomes than Norman.
If we are interested in the history of human activity on the island, perhaps we should spend a little more time thinking about our ancient forebears, the Bronze Age people and those who came before them. There is an obvious difficulty in that they omitted to leave us written records. Notwithstanding, archaeology offers important possibilities for enlightenment in this area, as does the more recently pursued scientific study of genetic remains. Some of the details already revealed by genetic investigation are fascinating.
The sequencing of early Bronze Age genomes from Rathlin Island, for example, reveals that Bronze Age arrivals to Ireland brought with them the gene that accounts for the high level of hemochromatosis carriers in our midst. (I am a carrier myself.) Our fondness for dairy also goes back to the Bronze age. Today the Irish have one of the highest tolerances of dairy in the world, a characteristic which originated in the genes of our Bronze Age ancestors. Later, the medieval Irish were great consumers of dairy, and this dietary preference survived into modern times. On the road where I grew up in the 1960s four to ten bottles of milk were dropped every day on each doorstep. (We got a modest six pints.)
Future genetic studies, in conjunction with archaeological work, are likely to tell us a great deal about life in the remote past and augment what we know about the not so remote past. Some surprises, not all pleasant, are likely.
Unsurprisingly, it seems there are probably more distinct Norse (still minuscule) than Norman genetic remains in Irish DNA. That would make sense, as more Vikings settled here and over a longer period. Curiously, given that they certainly disrupted the Gaelic calm, they do not feature on the ethno-nationalist hate list. Maybe that should be looked at. No one seems to mind those chalice-stealing skull-splitters who sailed up the Liffey, parking their long skinny, and admittedly ingeniously designed, boats opposite Trinity at the bottom of D’Olier Street. When not slaughtering, pillaging, being industrious, establishing slave markets or setting up towns and trade routes, they went around the place naming streams, peninsulas and other things that were there long before they arrived and already had names. Why is no one saying that it was really eleven hundred years of slavery?
OK, OK, but what about that army of people among us with Norman-sounding names? Where did they come from if very few Normans came here? The answer can only be that they were here all along. Those few Normans who came had advanced military technology and tactics and, as a result, did very well for themselves and became elite landowners. They introduced feudalism, a new system of land management and exploitation, across the lands they expropriated, with locals becoming tenants and labourers who, very probably, enjoyed little in the way of personal freedom. Being small in number, the Normans had a huge dependence on the locals. Medieval agriculture was labour-intensive. Even pastoral required significant labour. (Some centuries earlier, St Patrick did his bit, albeit involuntary, on the side of Slemish to help out with the sheep. Fair play Patricius!)
The reason there are so many Norman names around the place is because of the cultural overlay that occurred as a result of Norman economic and general dominance in certain areas. It is highly likely that some of the people who worked for the Normans or fell within their sphere of influence adopted their names or had them thrust upon them for purposes of identification, which is always the function of surnames. (The same process occurred in southern Italy, Sicily and England.) The ancestors of the bulk of those Burkes, Fitzgeralds, D’Arcys and Barrys one meets around the place, notwithstanding their occasional aristocratic illusions, were not bloodline Normans back in the day. We can assume that they simply serfed or were tenants of the Normans and had the same dominant local mix of Neolithic and Steppe farmer genes as the rest of the country.
Working closely with the locals was an unavoidable result of the Normans’ small numbers. The problem became evident from early on. In 1175 under the treaty of Windsor between Henry II and Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair (Rory O’Connor), it was agreed that Ruaidrí would send back those farmers who fled the lands appropriated by the Normans, by force if necessary. It seems likely many of these returnees underwent name changes.
Some may have adopted certain Norman cultural practices, but genetically they were true blue ‘Gaels’. Some, perhaps many, of these became the Old English (Seanghaill) a separate seam within Irish culture, and one which, with good reason, has generally been highly regarded, especially by those who have not succumbed to the pieties of late romantic ethno-nationalism.
Ironically, late romantic Irish histories offer a mirror image of the Whig history that English chauvinists employ to justify empire, using the spurious doctrine of historical progress. Irish Whig nationalist history is structurally derived from the English model in that it offers a historical narrative featuring a central highway of resistance, beside which everything else becomes irrelevant. It echoes the Whig understanding of history as a steady march towards modernity, civilisation and the moral good, encapsulated in the British empire, and sadly unavailable to less advanced peoples who will always require help along history’s highway. Highway history, whether Whig imperial or Whig nationalist, is essentially propaganda.
Eoin MacNeill was a great scholar of Gaelic Ireland but also a Whig nationalist historian of the late romantic period. He was also, as few will need reminding, the early twentieth century Sinn Féin intellectual who – let’s not mince our words – made a dog’s dinner of protecting Southern interests at the time of the boundary commission. There was also that 1916 business, as a result of which he is still known in some licensed premises as ‘The Countermander’.
MacNeill really really disliked the Normans. For him, the arrival of this alien people marked the beginning of Irish domination by foreigners and the destruction of the organic Gaelic order. Given his strong opinions, we can be pretty sure the professor would not only be backing the lads from Transnistria but also shouting abusive slogans at the Normies, that is, if he was prepared to watch foreign games, which is unlikely.
The thinking of Aengus Ó Snodaigh, a Sinn Féin TD and intellectual, is similar to that of MacNeill. He too is a Whig nationalist who sees the Normans as bad people who kicked off long centuries of oppression. From what he has said, it would appear that he sees them as worse than even the Black and Tans. (This is a strong view which could lead to misunderstandings in the pub.) Anyway, given that this is his thinking, it is hardly surprising that he wants us to keep our Gaelic hands clean and pure and turn our backs on the upcoming commemoration of Norman influence across Europe. He suggests, among other things, that we should instead be celebrating the Gaelic aristocrat and king of Connaught Turlough Mór O’Conor. Turlough was father of Ruaidrí, the last high king, whose daughter married the Norman Hugh de Lacey in a political marriage settlement. (It really is hard to find a clean Gaelic hands. Even the high king Ua Conchobairs are tainted by Norman connection.)
Apart from anything else, some might see the proposed Turlough Mór O’Conor celebration as a curious proposal for a republican socialist to make in 2025 in a democratic state where the common people are in power and have a settled hostility towards aristocratic governance. What about the ordinary unfree people of Gaelic and Norman Ireland, one might ask? You might expect a socialist to take an interest in them. But there you are, Turlough Mór O’Conor is the one Aengus says we should be celebrating. There are all sorts of socialists out there.
People – well, at least the usual suspects – have been queuing up to laugh at Mr Ó Snodaigh since he made his intervention. But, and this has to be said even if it dilutes the fun, maybe the eye-roll sneer thing is a bit facile. Certainly, if we ask the question has Mr Ó Snodaigh in any degree a legitimate point, the answer is an emphatic no. Like MacNeill, he’s got the Norman invaders wrong, and in an annoying preachy way. The Normans are in the halfpenny place when it comes to disruption and destruction in Irish history. The Gaelic order survived largely intact well into the sixteenth century, four centuries after the Norman arrival. The real problems were to begin with Henry VIII. Very substantial disruption was experienced in the Tudor and post-Tudor periods, indeed something approaching a holocaust, and much more again in the ‘remote’ past.
Those people in Ireland who were to a greater or lesser degree enmeshed in Irish Norman culture developed separatist aspirations from an early date and were to play a consistent role in combating English depredations through modern Irish history. No harm in acknowledging them, some might say.
You don’t have to be a Whig nationalist to know that the island suffered from extensive periods of despoliation and cultural destruction, or to find it useful to identify the agents of those destructions, and also to look at how and why such events occurred and what the consequences were. That is essential to the core purpose of history, which is looking into how we got to where we are. While we’re at it, we should go further and note that the idea is not to engage with history in order to go around smugly knowing how we got to where we are. Ultimately, the purpose is to enhance society with the sort of knowledge that might usefully inform its actions, decisions and self-knowledge. In more specific terms the study of Irish history confronts us with the destructive violence our species is capable of and challenges us to discover practical and moral defences. There is also the plus of finding meaning in the human experience of the Irish people, to whom many readers will belong, whether by birth or as a result of signing up in the Convention Centre. Highway history will not contribute much to this purpose.
If that all sounds a bit fancy, we should recall that the grim alternative is to view the past as a wonderful soup, full of interesting bits and pieces, signifying nothing. If there was any pain, well, as Joyce’s character Haines (no first name given) proposed: ‘history is to blame’.
Anyway, before we finally decide how to think about the Normans, we need the comparative perspective that will come from scrolling back to earlier invasions, conquests and migrations. Some of them, it must be said, make the Norman invasion look like a group of Guardian readers on a guided cheese-tasting tour.
Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, who were subsequently wiped out, arrived from mainland Europe around ten thousand years ago. These nomadic drifters left few remains apart from some organic bits and pieces, a few huts, fish traps, dugout canoes, along with some stone tools and mounds of seashells. Given their barely discernible footprint, they look something like the original ‘leave no trace’ people. Today, those with Green sympathies might see them as the moral giants of the Irish past. They didn’t displace anyone (applause) and they lived in a relatively harmonious balance with nature (prolonged and enthusiastic applause), and it looks like they may not have hunted any other species to extinction (hats thrown in the air, general hysteria). Well, that bit about harmonious balance might not be entirely true, at least beyond Ireland. Globally, according to Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers drove half the world’s big creatures, including other human species, to extinction before the arrival of agriculture. Looks like feet of clay everywhere from the cognitive revolution onwards. Well, perhaps not everywhere. If cognition has made us immeasurably more capable of destruction, it has also enabled the rise of forces capable of restraining that capacity such as art, religion, politics, music, literature, philosophy and science, all of which can contribute to the generation of moral perspective. (At present, as we know, the clay feet are in the ascendant, leaving the rest of us on the back foot, at least for now.)
There is western hunter-gatherer DNA in today’s Irish genomes but none of this may have come from the hunter-gatherers who lived in Ireland. It is possible this contribution originates with our Neolithic and especially Brone Age ancestors, whose genes included Mesolithic DNA. It seems quite possible that Irish hunter-gatherer people were eliminated, with virtually nothing left behind.
Anyway, before they were eliminated, the Mesolithic people had a very pleasant time here in Ireland for around four thousand years, moving around seasonally in canoes, eating fish and hazelnuts and, almost certainly, entertaining themselves with stories and verse. By any standards, they had a good innings but, as we have often been told, all good things come to an end. Enter the Neolithic Anatolian farmers. Nothing would ever be the same.
Neolithic farmers spread slowly northwest across Europe from the area known as the Fertile Crescent, which included eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, Syria, and western Iran. This was where European agriculture, with its relatively high-density populations, originated, and from where it spread, systematically displacing and ‘intermarrying’ with much smaller hunter-gatherer peoples. This process of displacement was a structural aspect of Neolithic expansion, and it continued when they finally made it to Ireland around 4000 BCE.
Given that Neolithic agriculture advanced at the modest rate of approximately one kilometre a year, it might be assumed the farmers’ arrival was relatively peaceful. However, the steady destruction of forests and general interference with the environment hunter-gatherers depended on, may well have rendered Neolithic innovations unwelcome. When we consider that the Céide Fields, the extensive early agricultural system on the Mayo coast, dates from the mid- to late Neolithic period, it is clear that the farmers’ advance, albeit indirect, was remorseless and that it must have put pressure on the Mesolithic population. It is said there is some evidence of Mesolithic resistance to advancing farmers in continental Europe. This may also have occurred in Ireland.
Certainly, the Mesolithic populations and their ‘way of life’ were replaced across Europe. The debate has been whether they integrated with the Neolithic farmers or whether they were eliminated by them. For some the discovery of Mesolithic hunter-gatherer genes in the neolithic population settles the debate in favour of integration. However, we cannot really be sure. Future genome sequencing may reveal that it was a bit of both, integration and elimination.
How often have we heard in historical accounts following conflict that ‘the men were slaughtered while the women and children were enslaved’? In many historical cases, versions of this seem to have had the status of ‘best practice’. (Troy, Carthage, Jerusalem, the Mongol conquests, Constantinople and, in a more recent variant, Srebrenica.)
Throughout history, slaves have been found to be economically crucial. Agricultural societies had a great need for labour and slave labour has been used through history to tend crops and animals. Future genetic studies may tell us whether there was a gender dimension to the elimination of hunter-gatherers and whether slavery and the need for agricultural labour played a part, also whether female slaves were coerced into reproduction following forced concubinage. The somewhat anodyne concept of ‘intermarrying’ might not be adequate to describe what actually occurred. It seems very likely to the present writer that the neolithic Irish got up to some very unpleasant things and that the Bronze Age farmers who followed (that’s us, genetically speaking) were possibly worse and may well have engaged in genocide.
It seems that in some cases complete elimination of hunter-gatherers over a relatively short time was practised. A new study from Lund university in Sweden study shows that when Neolithic farmers arrived in Scandinavia they drove out or slaughtered the gatherers, hunters and fishers who had previously populated the territory. Burial excavations reveal that within a few generations, almost the entire hunter-gatherer population was wiped out.
While we do not know the level of violence involved, the Anatolian farmers certainly took over in Ireland. These Neolithic farmers organised a coordinated agriculture, which in the normal course produced a surplus above subsistence. This was a key advantage. It allowed for specialist non-agricultural labour, such as tool- and weapon-makers, a security apparatus, building workers, scholars to consider astrological and mathematical problems, a political class and, of course, priests to oversee hierarchies, enforce social cohesion and conduct rituals. The nomadic Mesolithics didn’t really have a chance.
Neolithic people left considerable remains of their culture across Ireland, stone circles and a large number and variety of megalithic tombs, including the spectacular Newgrange. It seems the culture was aristocratic and royal. It also seems likely that slavery or something close to it was institutionalised. They continued happily for about 1,500 years, looking after their farms and building passage, wedge and portal tombs for their upper classes. Then came the visitors from Russia. Nothing would ever be the same.
The new Bronze Age arrivals originated in the Eurasian steppe. These Steppe people are associated with the spread of Indo-European languages across Europe. They were a violent people and in Britain and Ireland, it is said, their arrival was marked by a massive genetic turnover which saw the elimination of around 90 per cent of the Neolithic population, over a period of currently uncertain length.
The reason for their spectacular success was their superior military technology. They had metal weapons, which were more effective than the Neolithic flints. Crucially, the Steppe peoples had domesticated the horse, which also conferred huge advantages in military ability and enabled a high-speed migration across Europe. The Steppe expansion was approximately 400 per cent faster than that of the Neolithic farmers. The Steppe peoples it seems had also mastered archery and may have developed a specialist warrior class capable of conducting warfare from a distance. Once again, the existing population didn’t have a chance.
It is not yet known whether the Neolithic genetic survivals into the Bronze Age period were primarily of female mtDNA and whether militarily defeated Neolithic populations were enslaved. The survival of Irish Neolithic genes in today’s Irish genomes may be in the region of 10 per cent. Future genetic studies will probably answer some of these questions. Archaeology may help answer questions around slavery. (Archaeologists have certainly already discussed the subject.)
It is known that the Steppe peoples were pastoral herders and that when they arrived in western Europe they found conditions quite different and unsuited to their traditional form of pastoralism. It is believed that over a few generations they adopted tillage. Such a transition would arguably have created the need for a slave population to support the increased labour requirements of western agriculture.
These incoming and heavily militarised Bronze Age agriculturists have bequeathed the majority of modern Irish DNA. Subsequent interactions with outside peoples, such as the Norse, the Normans and the English did not involve mass migration, and their ancestral DNA contribution is minor. (The North offers a partial exception to this pattern.)
The first evidence of Celtic influence appears around 2,000 years after the arrival of the Steppe peoples, around 500 BCE. Significantly, unlike the cases of the Neolithic and Steppe arrivals, there has been no shift in the genetic record determined to date. This suggests a process of cultural overlay, either voluntarily adopted or linked with the demographically insignificant incursion of a military elite, such as that later constituted by the Normans and those who followed over the infamous 800 years. In the case of the Celts there is no archaeological evidence of an invasion or sudden cultural break. The adoption of Celtic language is thought to have been gradual.
The consensus among scholars would appear to be that ‘Across most of Europe, the spread of Iron Age technology and Celtic (Indo-European) languages was not primarily driven by mass migrations or invasions, but rather by cultural transmission, elite influence, and social transformation within existing populations.’ The arrival of iron tools and weapons was transformative. It is likely that those who carried knowledge of this new technology, a small and probably well-armed cohort of prehistoric warriors and artisans, had immense cultural influence. Archaeological evidence is reported in Europe of earlier settlements overlaid by Celtic ones, which again is suggestive of acculturation rather than sudden replacement. In short, it seems people adopted Celtic language and social structures through a process of cultural overlay rather than as a result of mass migration or invasion. (Future genetic studies will presumably confirm, modify or overturn this explanation.)
Celtic acculturation was to lead to a high golden age of artistic, intellectual and religious achievement in Ireland, the discussion of which will have to wait for another time. First, let us get back to the Normans. Who were they and what did they get up to?
Early in the second Christian millennium the Franco-Normans began to spread their wings. They were one of the more militarily successful, if numerically minor, elements to emerge in the centuries following the collapse of the western Roman empire. The Normans were to give Italy, England, Ireland and parts of the Middle East an unambiguous lesson in the sort of power politics which are now back in fashion. They have been described as an ‘aristocratic diaspora’ which thrived following the division of Charlemagne’s short-lived Frankish empire, itself a post-Roman phenomenon. ‘Aristocratic diaspora’ sounds like the sort of phrase the organisers of the 2027 celebrations might be tempted to use.
Expressed more prosaically, the Normans were a gang of marauding Vikings who were causing havoc in post-Carolingian France. Charles the Simple (not to be confused with his cousin, Charles the Fat) decided to buy off a small but very disruptive Viking element in 911 AD by granting a fiefdom to their leader, Rollo. The land involved would become the Duchy of Normandy. As part of the arrangement, the Vikings agreed to adopt Christianity, swore loyalty to Charles and agreed to defend the Seine valley area against other Viking attacks. It was a feudal solution to a Viking problem.
At one level it seems a clever enough land-for-peace deal on the part of Charles. From another perspective, it could be said that Charles triggered all sorts of problems by enabling the Normandy Vikings to bring their thievery to a higher and institutionalised level. Norman territorial expansion was made possible by Charles’s having stitched the Normans into the feudal land-focused political order. There would be many victims including France itself as, arguably, the centuries of acquisitive bother endured by the French at the hands of the English Normans and the post-Norman English can all be traced to Charles’s unique compromise with Rollo, prompted by his desire for a quiet life.
There were actually numerous other Viking marauder groups across Europe which didn’t end up with fiefdoms. Charles the Fat tended to deal with those annoying him by offering tribute, but nothing in the way of land. Generally, the European Viking gangs integrated and faded away over time, just as the Norse in Ireland did. The exception was the Normans. Charles the Fat generally gets a bad press, but it could just as easily be argued that he got the brains of the family.
The ‘settled’ Vikings of Normandy were not at all interested in becoming peaceful regional farmers. Viking appetites were still very much alive in their culture. There would be no beating of swords to ploughshares. Once ensconced in their fiefdom, the Normans thoroughly institutionalised their control over the economy and population. They had learned from the Franks the feudal mechanisms of social and agricultural control along with the principles of primogeniture, which they implemented with a new rigour and consistency. This vigorous adoption of feudal practices yielded a centralised and militarised society, which echoed traditional Viking military hierarchies. Land tenure in return for military service was the basic arrangement. Having learned castle-building from the Carolingians, the Normans went on to perfect the skill, becoming Europe’s greatest practitioners. These settled Vikings remained warlike, with territorial expansion now implicit in their social organisation. It was this post-Viking transformation of Normandy that, with a little help from Flemings and Bretons, yielded William the bulk of the massive army and navy he used to invade England in 1066.
Settled Vikings groups had previously been urban-based. In places like the Danelaw in England, Dublin and Kievan Rus, they excelled in trade, urban development, and localised power. Now there were other options. Having learned the grammar of feudalism, and having perfected military capacities, the Normans could potentially insert themselves, through the application of concentrated violence, at the top of a targeted society and achieve control over its wealth, land and population.
In Normandy, the Vikings integrated with the French locals, intermarrying within a generation. They had to. Integration was unavoidable given their small numbers and the fact that they were mostly male. The second generation of Normans spoke French. Integration was also spurred by the effects on daily life of their conversion to Christianity, which of course was the religion of the local population. Again, the necessity to communicate with the French, who were all around them and who were heavily involved in tending the Normans’ new-found assets, contributed to their rapid transformation into Franco-Normans.
The Norman pattern of cultural integration with the existing populations of targeted areas was fundamental to their early model of expansion. It was to be repeated in Italy, England, Scotland and Ireland, but for only a short period in Wales. From the thirteenth century the Normans would experiment in Wales with imperial-like possibilities for expansion that transcended the feudal model.
Classic Norman feudal expansionism was also facilitated by the consistent application of primogeniture – full inheritance to the first-born male. Primogeniture meant there was a permanent population of warrior knights excluded from local power. These aristocratic warriors, second, third and other sons, had to seek their fortunes elsewhere, which they did. This dynamic was not so prominent in the English adventure, which was a little different, but it was to the fore in the Italian, Scottish and Irish expansions and very much so in the Crusades, and also in the concerted efforts made over several centuries to win and hold territory in France.
However, the classic Norman feudal model of expansion had its limitations, one could even say absurdities, at least when viewed from a post-aristocratic perspective. In acquired territories the Normans integrated while maintaining their progressively diluted male bloodline at the apex of social and economic power. The aristocratic devotion to the principle of patriarchal bloodline ignores the obvious reality that the male bloodline dilutes rapidly. In the light of this, it could be said that the Normans went to a great deal of trouble to depose elites whose blood relatives, with Norman assistance, were subsequently reinstalled. In this sense, Norman aristocratic castles were castles in the air. Ultimately, it was distinctive cultural attributes they were exporting, and it was these which would endure, including in Ireland.
Norman feudal expansion, then, had none of the transformative finality of mass migration, such as that experienced in Ireland’s remote past. Those remote migrations still genetically, but not culturally, define today’s Irish populations. Irish cultural composition has a myriad of historical sources, and unquestionably, it is cultural composition that defines a people.
At Hastings in 1066 the Norman military, led by William of Normandy, who crossed the English Channel with an estimated 700 ships, triumphed over King Harold, whose relatively united tribal kingdom was known in Old English as Englalond. William claimed the territory and crown, on foot of an attenuated dynastic connection, a common feudal manoeuvre employed to justify violent takeovers. Thereafter, he became king and added ‘right of conquest’ to his justification. The ‘right of conquest’ justification was very much to the fore when it came to Wales, where integration and autonomy were ruled out. It is an imperial concept, originally Roman, but one which has been embraced by many since and continues to have political appeal.
The armies that faced each other at Hastings were of roughly equal size. However, Harold’s army was battle-weary and weakened from having recently fought off invaders from Norway. This contributed to the Norman victory. The invading army was superior in terms of organisation, tactics and the availability of mounted knights and archers. The unity, albeit fragile, of the ‘English’ meant that the single victory at Hastings, where King Harold died, was decisive. There were no other major English armies to defeat. The victory enabled William to march on London and be crowned on Christmas day 1066.
Once in England, the victors concentrated on replacing the upper landed tier of society with Normans. Those with urban wealth were not so badly affected. The Doomsday Book of 1084 was effectively a Norman ledger recording land ownership and assets, undertaken to facilitate tax-gathering and control. It shows the signature Norman work of asset-grabbing was completed within a generation of Hastings. England by then was effectively controlled by around 250 people. Beneath this top tier were about 2,000 landed knights and beneath them around 8,000 new settlers, though many in this category were urban and not especially powerful. In all, around 10,000 Normans came around the time of the conquest. (Ireland too had a Doomsday book but it was lost to fire in 1305. It would have shown that the top Norman tier in Ireland numbered about twenty-five.)
The newcomers did not bring a full culture in the broad sense. It was more a case of institutions and practices calculated to facilitate control. The Norman legal system buttressed royal centralised power and tax collection. Strict primogeniture was practised and imposed on the English. Politically loyal continental religious orders with greater affiliation to Rome were introduced and were granted land, from which they ruthlessly extracted rent. Most Anglo-Saxon bishops were dismissed from their posts.
As these things go, it worked well. The Normans brought stability, considerable economic growth and prosperity. The numerous castles they built became vibrant market centres and the long period of random disruptive attacks from outside ceased. It seems the ordinary English accepted and may even have welcomed the new order, or aspects of it, even though a very large number of freemen were legally recategorised as serfs.
Since then, the English have never really worked out how to feel about the Normans. A residue of resentment persisted through the centuries and complaints against ‘the Norman yoke’ never disappeared. One historian in the late twentieth century complained of what he termed ‘the thousand-year Reich’. The story of Robin Hood, who is essentially an anti-Norman rebel, has been very popular in England from medieval to contemporary times. Today, the remnants of native hostility towards the Normans are perhaps found in the anti-toff attitudes held by many in the Labour Party. And yet, despite all this the overarching English feeling within English culture is that Norman integration was successful.
While the spoken language and general culture of post-conquest England would draw heavily on the pre-Norman world, Norman values have shaped English elite culture since the Hastings victory. A version of the aristocratic patrilineal ideal survived the end of feudalism in England and would remain central to elite culture, as would the practice of primogeniture, the tendency to view land as the most perfect form of wealth and the obsessional interest in hunting. And, of course, there is the matter of persisting expansionist tendencies.
Following the conquest, the English Norman elite sat at the top of English society largely separate from the conquered, a decision necessitated by the frequently extreme local violence required during the transition phase. (People will always object to being replaced and robbed.) But, in time, the demographics of the situation had their inevitable effect. Intermarrying and economic interaction led to a wider cultural integration. Initially this was more pronounced at lower social levels. Nonetheless, within two generations the Normans had begun to speak English in informal settings. As middle English began to emerge, it appears the Normans became bilingual. The dynamic was clearly similar to that of Normandy. However, the pace of integration was somewhat slower among the elite due, presumably, to the size and wealth of the land which had to be digested. It could be said that the Normans believed they had swallowed the English, and the English believed they had swallowed the Normans, leaving both sides satisfied that they had dined well.
The Irish experience would be quite different. The conquest of England was a state-led centralised operation whereas that of Ireland was more spontaneous and arose from a local need for military assistance. In this it closely resembled the Italian experience. All three cases saw versions of the classic Norman mix of domination and integration. A group of impressively armed and capable Normans arrived in Ireland in 1169. They were joined soon after by Strongbow, a more senior aristocrat. Most were non-inheriting sons or otherwise marginalised at home. Their purpose, it can be inferred, was integration from a position of dominance. One source suggests the loss of five thousand Irish warriors to thirty Norman knights in the post-invasion period.
Following the initial violence, the idea of joining and transforming the Irish elite by inserting themselves at the top was acted on quickly. Strongbow married the king of Leinster’s daughter Aífe and became heir to her father, Diarmait. Raymond le Gros was promised Diarmait MacMurrough’s other daughter, Basilia. Hugh de Lacy and William de Burgh also married into the Irish elite. It is very likely that other knights who seized land also married into Gaelic families. Intermarriage with the defeated upper orders was the Norman way.
The invaders continued to impress militarily and after a century controlled as much as two-thirds of the country, at least nominally. After a further century their control had contracted considerably due to a number of factors including, crucially, crown disinterest, which enabled a Gaelic military resurgence and Gaelicisation of the Norman population. This was the process, again typically Norman, whereby many Anglo-Norman settlers adopted Gaelic language, customs, laws and identity. Intermarriage, no doubt, accelerated this process.
The Hibernicisation process was similar to that which occurred in England and whose outcome there contributed to a high level of stability. However, there was a crucial difference. The Irish Normans were prevented from fully integrating with the Irish elite by the English Normans. The English Normans did not want full integration to take place because they feared that an independent Norman kingdom might emerge in Ireland and that it might be a threat to the English kingdom and its wider interests. Henry II, who felt this plausible danger acutely, had to work out a way to protect his interests politically.
First, he threatened the Irish Normans by visiting with a large army. It is clear that the Irish Normans, who were schooled in standard Norman integrative behaviour, did not welcome this. But a large army is a large army, so they submitted. Local elites also formally recognised Henry’s overlordship. If Henry was expecting a Hastings moment, he didn’t get one. But he did get the submission he wanted and went home with his army’s swords undrawn.
The problem of how to control and govern Ireland, however, remained. Henry’s answer was to establish the Lordship of Ireland, under which the Irish Normans constituted a lordship appended to the English crown but not to the English realm. The idea was to control Ireland but not to unite it with England in a single polity. An English-controlled centre was to operate from Dublin and the Irish Normans were given the task of representing the crown’s interests in Ireland.
The plan then was imperial-like control of Ireland. But the Lordship never worked because it was not backed by the massive forces theoretically available to the crown. Ireland was never ‘pacified’ and this is probably the most important historical fact in the Irish pre-Tudor centuries. The reason Henry did not back the lordship with overwhelming force was because he was busy militarily in Wales, France, Scotland and the Middle East. He did not have the resources to definitively suppress the Irish. His Plantagenet successors had exactly the same problem.
It was not the first or last time Ireland escaped outside interference owing to its geopolitical unimportance.
Had other more important interests not existed, it is certain that more attention would have been paid to Ireland, whose experience would have likely resembled the destruction which was visited on Wales. In Wales the Normans did not pursue integration or feudal autonomy, either for the Welsh chieftains or the Norman barons of the marchlands. Throughout the thirteenth century under Edward I, there was a policy of no negotiation with the Welsh. There were no hybrid legal or cultural compromises. The objective was cultural suppression and forced assimilation. The English crown explicitly used and codified the right of conquest as the legal foundation for its control over Wales. It was effectively an imperial undertaking. Ireland escaped this fate, which meant it would have a different Norman experience.
So, taking all this into account, if we turn to the planned 2027 Norman celebrations, what advice can we give to the Normandy committee? Well first off, they will have to realise that no one is really going to clap hands for mass expropriation. But if they can get past this there are possibilities. The English have indicated a desire to get involved. This is hardly surprising. After all, they see themselves as having melded well with the Normans. We can expect some impressive exhibitions, and probably also celebrations of Norman-influenced English gothic architecture, which is very impressive. (I may pop over.)
Wales could be a different matter. These days the Welsh prefer to dislike the English rather than the Normans, who are no longer a focus of national resentment. They tend to pass over the Normans as ‘mists of time’ heritage stuff. Those huge castles are good for tourism after all. Maybe they’re right. Certainly the energies they have invested in reviving and preserving their language have had impressive results.
The Italians are likely to go along with the party if for no other reason than to emphasise their northern European connections. Actually, a willingness to join in has already been expressed, especially in Sicily. A note of warning: some caution would be advisable around the amazing, and Norman-endorsed, multiculturalism of medieval southern Italy. Many in Italy are not really in the mood for that sort of thing these days, including the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. It is difficult to predict the approach the French will take. They may not all follow the Normandy line. Paris may grandly dismiss it as a regional matter. But if the whole thing can somehow be sold as an expression of French grandeur, there’ll be no stopping them.
The Scottish response might well be positive, as Scottish nationalism is inclusive rather than ethnic: Celtic, Norse, Norman, and Lowland elements are all valued as part of the national tradition. Norman knights integrated there and went on to adopt pro-Scottish and anti-English political positions. (Remember William Wallace and the Bruce brothers?) Thus far, however, Holyrood has remained silent. It could be they have other issues on their minds.
When it comes to the Middle East, great caution would be advised. Under no circumstances should countries in that region be approached for sponsorship. Norman crusaders fought in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine. It is unlikely that anyone living in those areas today will want to join in the festivities. Indeed, most people living in the Middle East spit when the term crusader is mentioned. All things considered, it is probably better not to include the Middle East in the brochure.
When it comes to the Irish, there are possibilities, thanks to the four-century wait before the English decided to pummel the Hibernians into the ground. (A figure of 600,000 Irish war dead has been suggested for the Tudor-initiated destruction.) Because of this delay there is an opportunity to celebrate the Norman, (seanghaill) tradition in Irish culture and politics, which is a pretty rich tradition. Figures ranging from Ulick de Búrca, to those who supported Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh, to Silken Thomas, to Geoffrey Keating, to Luke Wadding, to the Roths of Kilkenny to Edmund Rice and Nano Nagle and on and on, can all potentially feature. There’s a lot there, but please note, it will have to be packed into one year. There is no possibility anyone in Ireland could take anything approaching another decade of commemorations.
A final note of caution: great care should be taken to ensure that solipsistic elements within the population of Os and Macs do not derail proceedings. The committee’s unwavering position should be that the Os and the Macs have had their day in the sun. Let the roar from the Normandy terraces be loud and proud: G’wan the Normies!
1/7/2025
Maurice Earls is joint editor of the Dublin Review of Books.
